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Description:Sea level rise will exacerbate coastal hazards like flooding and erosion on Washington State’s shorelines. In this paper we examine trade-offs associated with various coastal management options that are likely to be considered for Washington’s shorelines as sea level rises. Specifically, we qualitatively assess the costs, effectiveness, and social and ecological implications of four different types of coastal management approaches: • Hard defensive structures: Protecting infrastructure, homes or land from flooding or erosion by building hard shoreline structures. These can include bulkheads, seawalls, revetments, or dikes depending on their design or primary purpose (i.e., controlling flooding versus erosion). • Soft shore stabilization: Protecting infrastructure, homes or land from coastal flooding or erosion with soft shore stabilization techniques. Soft shore stabilization techniques include designs built with natural materials that are intended to replicate features of natural shorelines. Soft shore stabilization techniques can, in some circumstances, reduce risk from erosion and coastal flooding as sea level rises, without some of the social and ecological costs of hard defensive structures. • Accommodation: Accommodation approaches encompass a range of techniques designed to decrease the impacts of flooding when it occurs. Accommodation techniques include elevating homes, floodproofing to keep living areas dry, or raising critical systems (heating and electrical, for example) above flood heights. • Retreat and avoidance: Retreat and avoidance strategies manage erosion and flooding by removing or avoiding the development of homes or infrastructure from present or future hazardous zones along the shoreline. Retreat and avoidance strategies are sometimes associated with steep political hurdles and costs but are effective at reducing risk from coastal hazards and may also be the most cost-effective of the options over long timeframes.
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Rights Information:CC0 Public Domain
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Compliance:Submitted
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