Risks To Coastal Environments Flashcards
What is coastalisation?
Coastalisation is the movement of people towards the coast. Despite having a high flood risk, may people move to the coast due to tourism, high-yield agricultural lands, or housing pressure. Coastalisation can increase the environmental vulnerability of these locals to flooding due to storm surges
What is a storm surge?
A storm surge occurs when there is a short-term change in sea level, which may be due to low pressure during a depression or tropical cyclone.
The storm surge can be exacerbated through a variety of factors:
What makes a storm surge even worse?
Removing natural vegetation - Mangrove forests are the most productive and complex
ecosystem in the world. Mangroves also provide protection against extreme weather events like cyclones which are very common in the Bay of Bengal. However, due to pressure for land space, much mangrove forests are destroyed for tourism, local industry, or housing plains.
● Global Warming - As the surface of oceans get warmer, it is estimated that the frequency and intensity of storms will increase, and so the severity of storm surges and flooding is also expected to increase.
Consequences for communities due to storm surges?
Some areas of the coast may have significantly reduced house and land prices (as the area becomes known to be at significant risk). This can lead to economic loss for homeowners and local coastal economies. In the UK, many insurers don’t provide home insurance to people living along coastlines that are at extreme risk of erosion or storm surges.
Storm surges also damage the environment by destroying plant successions and damaging many coastal landforms. Depositional landforms, due to their unconsolidated nature, are most likely to be destroyed. Also, erosion may take place at accelerated rates or higher up along the cliff face, which can increase the risk of collapse.
Environmental refugees
As storm surges and erosion along some coastlines are predicted to increase, so too is the volume of environmental refugees displaced internally or internationally. People may lose their homes, way of life and culture as they are forced to migrate to avoid the rising eustatic sea level and the rising risk of coastal flooding.
