Imagine you are in a beach is flat is wide, is With pristine sand. Looks nice, right? Unfortunately, many beaches don't look this way. Their narrow, with steep cliffs and waves breaking close to the property line. This is a beach that's experiencing erosion in America. About 80 to 90% of sandy coastlines had this problem. So the government spends billions to expand some of the most rapidly eroding beaches in an effort to defend the coast. But this effort, while effective in the short term, can actually hurt beaches in the long run. It's because every shoreline on the planet is subject to erosion. Future ocean occurs when waves and currents remove sand from the shoreline.
The loss of sand makes the beach narrower and lowers its elevation. This erosion becomes a problem when it reaches structures built by humans along the coast, especially for beaches that generate tourism. The visitors enjoy the sandy coasts, while the city and towns nearby enjoy the revenue gained. But the driving factor there is the beach. A place like Miami Beach wouldn't have the same draw if there weren't lots of the same. In fact, there was a time when it didn't look this way at all. In the 1970s, a seawall turn the beach in Miami into a narrow strip.
But by the 80s, that beach had re emerged nice and wide. How? Well, coastal engineers rebuilt it, Their process called beach nourishment. Beach nourishment is a short protection strategy to try to counter the loss the national loss of sand. The typical way to do this is with dredging. Boats will dig up sand from borrow site and move it onto the beach. A pipe pumping suck up the sand that is transferred to the cross line where it's dumped or pumped out onto the beach and then bold dozers.
Move it around to try to mimic what the natural beach was like before the project took place. The result is a nice wide beach. The new profile will better defend the property line from damage during more intense weather like storm surge flight in the United States. Beach nourishment is the main strategy used to protect coastal properties for risky erosion. But there's a problem. The protection doesn't last, as the constant beating of waves and wind takes the sand away from the shore, and it soon looks like it did before the nourishment curd every two, eight years on average, the nourishment. Need to be repeated like this speech in Florida. Well this morning Lido Beach is under a local state of emergency. Look at how powerful the wind was earlier today. Problem getting worse by the hour. Leader Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida got an emergency nourishment in 2018 after damage from the storms reduced the beach to a narrow strip. But the beach had already gotten new sand 15 times since 1964, and Lido Key isn't an outlier. More than 200 of the 400 miles of critically roading coastlines in Florida have received one or more nourishments, and across the United States, there have been nearly 3000 no nourishment events. Since 1923. The funding for these projects gets a little wonky, but here's what's important. Federal government pays for a lot of these nourishments, up to 65% of the cost. State local funds will make up the rest, but not all beaches that want or need nourishment will get it. The Army Corp Engineers group that approves and designs nourishments prioritises defending some beaches over others based on the potential loss of value. According to Pro Publica, the core only funds nourishments with expected benefit is 2 1/2 times as high as the cost for communities. Word often meet that criteria.
So places like Miami Beach, FL in Ocean City, MD are more likely to get a lot of nourishment. They have the expensive short fund developments that make the investment worthwhile and for beaches that don't make the cut for nourishment, continued erosion to lead to damaged or destroyed property. Nourishment aren't just about protecting buildings, but also protecting the economies tide to them in the beach. Consider the $200 million spent on nourishment in Florida from 1995 to 2001. That might seem like a lot of money until you see the revenue from coastal tourism. It was 21.6 billion in just one. 2001 on average the state of florida generates more than $5.00 of revenue for every dollar invested in beach nourishment, which is why nourishment is so appealing. It makes economic sense, but they do present one major problem. According to research published by the American Geophysical Union, there's a feedback loop.
Nourishment tends to happen along beaches that generally have expansive properties. They also seem to dry development along the same shores despite the risk of future erosion. If you wrote a place that had nourished its beach, the houses behind that nurse from project were significantly larger in every case than. In a place that had never nourished its its shoreline at all. Research found that areas with nourish beaches at homes that are about three times bigger than non nourished ones, and the success of development is a real problem because it's based on false security. According to the researchers, each nourishment may actually mask or reduce the apparent impact of coastal hazards without changing the natural processes that drive them.
In fact, building more property in these areas only increases the potential damage from future erosion. So while beach nourishment protects properties and local economies in the short run, they also trick us into thinking it's safe to build in places that aren't. Which sets up coastal communities for an ugly reckoning at the shore sooner or later.
FUENTE:
Beach nourishment is the latest chapter in a never-ending tale of erosion. Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO About 80 to 90 percent of sandy beaches along America's coastlines are eroding. This is a problem because the developments humans build near them are static. So as beaches shrink, coastal hazards can threaten to damage or destroy homes and businesses while negatively impacting tourism that depends on the beach. The most popular strategy to counter these risks is a process called beach nourishment. Coastal engineers will add new sand to an eroding beach in order to rebuild or expand the shoreline. Watch the video above to learn more about how beach nourishments can help defend the coast but are problematic as a long-term solution. For more, here are the links to our sources for this video: Randall Parkinson on beach nourishment and climate change mitigation: https://research.fit.edu/media/site-s... ProPublica reporting on the high costs related to preserving vulnerable beaches: https://www.propublica.org/article/th... And for a closer look at the “feedback loop,” read a report on how researchers determined the link between nourishments and development along the coast: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c... Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com. Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
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