Storms, Erosion, Flooding

Seventy-five percent of the population of Massachusetts lives in coastal counties and our coasts provide an even greater number of people a wide range of economic, social, and recreational opportunities. Competing uses of our coastline can result in conflicts between the protection of waterfront upland property and the preservation of the beneficial functions of coastal landforms and resources, conflicts between private ownership of the coast and public access, and recreational demands on the coast through boating, fishing, shellfishing, and the use of beaches for swimming and sunbathing.

Threats to coastal communities include climate change driven sea-level rise, increasingly intense storm systems and their related flooding and shoreline erosion. The WHOI Sea Grant research program elements include:

• Characterizing coastal processes
• Coastal hazard mitigation
• Developing new approaches for managing shorelines and marshes, marine spatial planning and ocean zoning

WHOI Sea Grant employs specialists with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension to create an effective outreach partnership providing reliable technical and science‐based information to distinct groups within our region. Extension and outreach staff share their expertise with communities and individuals, as well as working directly with the management community charged with making regulatory decisions. Engagement efforts include:

• Assisting coastal resource managers, property owners, and the public in making informed, effective decisions that contribute to maintaining the beneficial functions of coastal landform systems
• Assisting towns with floodplain management and educating coastal managers and the public about flood risk and safety
• Creating and providing for free the Homeowner's Handbook to Prepare for Coastal Hazards and the Manual do Proprietario para Preparo a Riscos Costeiros (Portuguese translation)
• Monitoring changing shorelines using the CoastSnap camera cradles and community science