Lazarus et al (2016) - human-coastal systems

Question 1

Humans as a geomorphic force

Answer 1

Human activities related to agriculture, mining, and construction of physical infrastructure, from houses to highways, move more earth material than do natural geomorphic processes related to rivers, glaciers, wind, and waves .

Question 2

A groyne field that traps beach sand in front of one town tends to ex- acerbate erosion problems for neighbors downdrift (Pilkey and Dixon, 1996). But coastal engineering repercussions are not always so self- evident…

Answer 2

Some systemic interdependencies may only become apparent when a major storm finds a localised weakness in hazard protection that disrupts a larger, more diffuse infrastructural network

Question 3

Schematic of beach nourishment as a coastal exemplar of a coupled human–landscape system…

Answer 3

(1) natural littoral pro- cesses of alongshore and cross-shore sediment transport (Qs) create spatial patterns of beach accretion and erosion;
(2) coastal development built to benefit economically from the natural capital of a wide beach
(3) becomes vulnerable to damage from coastal hazards; risk exposure
(4) drives investment in hazard mitigation and shoreline protection. Where beach erosion is persistent, this cycle (1–4) repeats on a multi-annual to decadal cycle.

Question 4

Common-pool resource systems comprise…

Answer 4

the natural phenomena, social institutions, and mechanistic links that determine how humans share open-access resources.

Question 5

Irrigation systems are the classic example of an upstream– downstream asymmetrical resource

Answer 5

Imagine a setting in which water flows from an upstream source to a downstream sink, with different farmers distributed along its route. If farmers upstream divert too much water, whether intentionally or as an unintended consequence of leaky irrigation infrastructure, then farmers downstream have access to less water. If farmers upstream keep their irrigation works in good repair, then farmers downstream benefit regardless of whether they invest in maintaining their own infrastructure. The mobility of the resource – specifically, its net trans- ference from source to sink – means that, in the first case, farmers upstream have no obvious incentive to consider the consequences of their actions for farmers downstream; in the second case, farmers downstream have every incentive to free-ride on the investments by farmers upstream.