State and local governments plan for development of most land vulnerable to rising sea level along the US Atlantic coast
Date
2009-10-24Metadata
Show full item recordCitable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3311As published
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044008Keyword
Climate change; Adaptation; Land use planning; Sea-level rise; Wetland migration; Shore protectionAbstract
Rising sea level threatens existing coastal wetlands. Overall ecosystems could often survive by migrating
inland, if adjacent lands remained vacant. On the basis of 131 state and local land use plans, we estimate that
almost 60% of the land below 1 m along the US Atlantic coast is expected to be developed and thus unavailable
for the inland migration of wetlands. Less than 10% of the land below 1 m has been set aside for conservation.
Environmental regulators routinely grant permits for shore protection structures (which block wetland migration)
on the basis of a federal finding that these structures have no cumulative environmental impact. Our results
suggest that shore protection does have a cumulative impact. If sea level rise is taken into account, wetland
policies that previously seemed to comply with federal law probably violate the Clean Water Act.
Description
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of IOP Publishing for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in
Environmental Research Letters 4 (2009): 044008, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044008.
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Suggested Citation
Preprint: Titus, J. G., Hudgens, D. E., Trescott, D. L., Craghan, M., Nuckols, W. H., Hershner, C. H., Kassakian, J. M., Linn, C. J., Merritt, P. G., McCue, T. M., O'Connell, James F., Tanski, J., Wang, Jue, "State and local governments plan for development of most land vulnerable to rising sea level along the US Atlantic coast", 2009-10-24, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044008, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3311Related items
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