Team up to save coastal cities

Link to collaborative project [1]

Coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels and increasingly frequent ocean storms threaten residents who depend on the environment for their economy and infrastructure.

To address these issues, Northeastern’s Coastal Sustainability Institute and The Nature Conservancy are combining their expertise in coastal conservation.

“It’s clear that coastal risks are rising,” said Mike Beck, the lead marine scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organization that works to protect communities from coastal hazards and climate change. “There’s a need for cost-effective solutions and an interest from decision-makers to address these issues together.”

More than half of the world’s population lives near the coast, with a growing number of people residing in major coastal cities such as Boston and Miami.

Northeastern is a global leader in coastal research, particularly through its work at the Marine Science Center and the Coastal Sustainability Institute, where faculty explore sea-level rise and storm surge, collapsing fisheries, invasive species, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and extreme weather.

Geoff Trussell, director of both the Marine Science Center and the Coastal Sustainability Institute, said that counties sitting on coastal shorelines produce 40 percent of the nation’s total jobs and 46 percent of its gross domestic product. But flooding damage in coastal cities could reach $1 trillion by 2050 and put their economies in jeopardy, he said.

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• Alison Bowden ‎ (← links)