Impacts of climate change on the tourist-carrying capacity at La Playa beach (Sardinia, IT)

Abstract

It is largely acknowledged that global mean sea level is rising and accelerating increasing low-lying coastal communities’ exposure and vulnerability. The IPCC AR5 identified the Mediterranean Sea as one of the semi-enclosed seas with projected high rate. Impacts of sea level rise (SLR) at local scale affect the number of visitors in highly vulnerable beaches and previous paper have quantified these adverse effects. In this paper we want to say that coastal climate change is not just sea level rise and other climatic factors can affect the optimal beach carrying capacity in complex and uncertain ways. Specifically, the paper shows that the effects of selected climatic factors as wave, rainfall and wind can be opposite to that of SLR and the beach management could even benefit from those trends.