Failure of coastal protection at Seacliff State Beach,Santa Cruz County,California, USA

Seacliff State Beach, along the shoreline of northern Monterey Bay, California, has a well-documented history of repeated destruction and reconstruction of seawalls and park facilities. Seven times in 60 years the timber seawall has been destroyed by winter storm waves and subsequently rebuilt. The deficiencies of the wall, including (a) inadequate attachment of timber lagging to pilings, (b) inability of pilings or lagging to withstand repeated impact of waves and logs, and (c) inadequate height and internal drainage system have never been adequately addressed and each successive wall has essentially been identical to the previously destroyed wall.     

Storm surges: perspectives and options

This review paper attempts to summarize the scattered and fragmented knowledge about past and possible future changing storm-surge statistics using the particularly well-studied case of the North Sea as an example. For this region, a complete and robust analysis methodology has been developed in recent years. This methodology is based on dynamical and statistical models. Using the concept of dynamical downscaling, development during recent decades, when sufficiently good and homogeneous weather data exist, has been “reconstructed,” and scenarios of possible future change are described. “Localization” allows estimation of changes at specific sites, e.g., harbors. As local water-level statistics depend not only on climate variations but also on local modifications of the local bathymetry, new options for adaptation emerge. For the case of Hamburg, an option for such future adaptations is discussed.     

Vegetation changes along the United States east coast following the great storm of march 1962

Regional-scale vegetation changes on Assateague Island following overwash from the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 were investigated using historical aerial photography. Grasses and dunes were more abundant in 1974 in areas that were overwashed, whereas areas that were not overwashed have been more extensively colonized by shrubs. The increase in shrubs on Assateague Island is attributed to the absence of a subsequent storm overwash.