Abstract
The northern Yucatan peninsula is prone to coastal flooding and erosion owing to its low-land elevation and high exposure to storms. Therefore, it is important to assess the capability of the beach-dune system to resist, recover, and adapt from storms in the context of coastal development and climate change. This work aims to investigate the role of human impacts on the spatiotemporal evolution of the Coastal Resilience Index (CRI) in the area. The study is conducted on a prograding micro-tidal beach located on the vicinity of coastal structures. Beach and dune morphometrics, characteristic beach parameters, and maximum shoreline recession were determined from the analysis of beach profiles undertaken along a 2-km straight of coastline during the 2015–2020 period. Moreover, the maximum extreme water levels were estimated using in situ data and numerical models. This information is employed to assess the alongshore and temporal variability of the beach resilience. The results suggest that the beach and dune morphology present alongshore and temporal variability due to the human impacts associated to the dune degradation and the presence of coastal structures. The analysis shows that coastal resilience has been increasing over the past years but presents significant alongshore variations. High CRI values were found at beach transects presenting low anthropogenic impact, whereas low resilience was observed at transects with a degraded dune or located in the vicinity of coastal structures regardless of presenting high progradation rates. The observed beach response during the passage of recent tropical storms is consistent with the CRI values.
Highlights
Low-laying coastal areas are prone to natural and anthropogenic perturbations associated to population growth, extreme events, and climate change (Wong et al, 2014)
The aim of this work is to investigate the role of human impact on costal resilience on a microtidal prograding beach located in Sisal, on the northwestern Yucatan peninsula’s coast
Field observations and numerical model simulations were employed to investigate coastal resilience on a prograding beach located on the northwestern Yucatan coast
Summary
Low-laying coastal areas are prone to natural and anthropogenic perturbations associated to population growth, extreme events, and climate change (Wong et al, 2014). Sea level rise due to climate change is expected to reach between 0.5 and 1.0 m by the end of the century (Nicholls et al, 2014). Coastal ecosystems (beaches, dunes, mangrove, seagrass, reefs, and wetlands) provide numerous ecosystem services including habitat to species and carbon dioxide sequestration (Pendleton et al, 2012). They can provide natural coastal protection by inducing wave energy dissipation during extreme events (Narayan et al, 2016), and the foredune acts as a natural barrier which provides ultimate coastal protection against coastal flooding (Sallenger, 2000). Coastal development has threatened such ecosystems, often triggering a greater exposure to extreme events and sea level rise (Neumann et al, 2015), reducing their resilience
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