Biorock Electric Reefs Grow Back Severely Eroded Beaches in Months

Thomas Goreau,Paulus Prong

doi:10.3390/jmse5040048

Abstract

Severely eroded beaches on low lying islands in Indonesia were grown back in a few months—believed to be a record—using an innovative method of shore protection, Biorock electric reef technology. Biorock shore protection reefs are growing limestone structures that get stronger with age and repair themselves, are cheaper than concrete or rock sea walls and breakwaters, and are much more effective at shore protection and beach growth. Biorock reefs are permeable, porous, growing, self-repairing structures of any size or shape, which dissipate wave energy by internal refraction, diffraction, and frictional dissipation. They do not cause reflection of waves like hard sea walls and breakwaters, which erodes the sand in front of, and then underneath, such structures, until they collapse. Biorock reefs stimulate settlement, growth, survival, and resistance to the environmental stress of all forms of marine life, restoring coral reefs, sea grasses, biological sand production, and fisheries habitat. Biorock reefs can grow back eroded beaches and islands faster than the rate of sea level rise, and are the most cost-effective method of shore protection and adaptation to global sea level rise for low lying islands and coasts.

Highlights

Accelerating global sea level rise is causing almost all beaches worldwide to erode [1]
IPCC projections of sea level rise are often thought by the public to represent the end point of sea level rise response to fossil fuel CO2, but they are merely points along the first 5, 10, 20—or at most 100—years, of the initial rise of a curve that will continue to increase for thousands of years
The time horizons for IPCCC climate change projections were chosen for political purposes, not for scientific ones, and miss the vast bulk of the real world long-term sea level and temperature responses to increased greenhouse gases [4]

Summary

Introduction

Accelerating global sea level rise is causing almost all beaches worldwide to erode [1]. The time horizons for IPCCC climate change projections were chosen for political purposes, not for scientific ones, and miss the vast bulk of the real world long-term sea level and temperature responses to increased greenhouse gases [4]. Global temperatures and sea levels lag thousands of years behind CO2 increases because of ocean mixing, so we have not yet really begun to feel the inevitable temperature and sea level responses. Because of these politically chosen time horizons, IPCC projections do NOT include more than 90% of the long-term climate response to changing CO2 [4,7,8,9]. By greatly underestimating the all too real long-term responses of temperature and sea level, they have lulled political decision makers into a false sense of complacency about the magnitude and duration of human-caused climate change or the urgency of reversing them before the really serious impacts hit future generations [4]

Methods

Results

Conclusion