The California Beach Resiliency Plan, funded by the California Ocean Protection Council, is a multidisciplinary effort to develop decision guidance for local communities to address the resilience of their beaches, including the multiple social and ecological functions and values that they provide. The project will also provide "snapshots" of the status of beaches and their vulnerability in each of 20 coastal counties along California's outer coast and within the San Francisco Bay. The Beach Resiliency Plan will assess statewide trends as well, and develop policy and other recommendations for statewide consideration of beach resiliency.
The project team includes researchers from UC Santa Barbara, CSU Channel Islands, the U.S.G.S., Point Blue Conservation Science, Strategic Earth, and CETO consulting. This multidisciplinary team is assessing the geophysical, ecological, public access and recreation, economic, Tribal cultural, social equity, and other dimensions of California's beaches. A core focus is understanding beach vulnerability in light of long-term sea level rise, and how to address planning for beach resiliency at the local level. The team is developing an understanding of beaches as socio-ecological systems.
For more information, please contact Charles Lester (charleslester@ucsb.edu).
- Beaches are accumulations of sand material shaped by ocean forces interacting with physical landforms and built structures.
- Accommodation Space is the three-dimensional area available for sediment to accumulate and for coastal landforms (like beaches or wetlands) to migrate or build upward.
- Beach Resiliency can be thought of as the capacity of the beach socio-ecological system to (1) Resist; (2) Rebound; (3) Adapt; and/or (4) Transform in response to environmental and social changes so as to maintain or enhance its core functions and values.
