Abstract
Low elevation coastal zones (LECZ) are extensive throughout the southeastern United States. LECZ communities are threatened by inundation from sea level rise, storm surge, wetland degradation, land subsidence, and hydrological flooding. Communication among scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and minority and poor residents must improve. We must predict processes spanning the ecological, physical, social, and health sciences. Communities need to address linkages of (1) human and socioeconomic vulnerabilities; (2) public health and safety; (3) economic concerns; (4) land loss; (5) wetland threats; and (6) coastal inundation. Essential capabilities must include a network to assemble and distribute data and model code to assess risk and its causes, support adaptive management, and improve the resiliency of communities. Better communication of information and understanding among residents and officials is essential. Here we review recent background literature on these matters and offer recommendations for integrating natural and social sciences. We advocate for a cyber-network of scientists, modelers, engineers, educators, and stakeholders from academia, federal state and local agencies, non-governmental organizations, residents, and the private sector. Our vision is to enhance future resilience of LECZ communities by offering approaches to mitigate hazards to human health, safety and welfare and reduce impacts to coastal residents and industries.
Highlights
Coastal communities in the low-lying southeastern USA face increasing hazards, including compound flooding by coinciding or sequential storm surge and torrential rains and lingering post-event impacts on human health superimposed on progressively rising sea levels
Several researchers have developed social vulnerability indices (SoVI) that can be readily applied to most regionally specific communities and cities for purposes of planning for flooding related to climate change as well as for disaster management [56,57,58,59]
As in southeast Florida, apeFortunately, all four of the low elevation coastal zones (LECZ) regions described in the previous section possess exriodic inundation events result from reduction in Gulf Stream transport among other nontensive resources and state or county agencies to provide reasonable levels of resilience supstorm factors [97]
Summary
Coastal communities in the low-lying southeastern USA face increasing hazards, including compound flooding by coinciding or sequential storm surge and torrential rains and lingering post-event impacts on human health superimposed on progressively rising sea levels. The right approach will involve multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams that include stakeholders, scientists, health professionals, emergency managers, politicians, and collaboration leaders, all with the depth of knowledge necessary to generate new emergent understandings of the interconnections of socio-economic, human health and natural systems. These understandings must include stakeholder perspectives and be effectively and readily communicated to non-scientists and the public in non-technical language. Strengthening communications and understanding among scientists, stakeholders, and policy makers is a fundamental goal advocated by this paper
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