Finding viable solutions to complex problems in sustainability science requires efforts to understand relationships between societies and physical environments. Ecosystem models and social-ecological systems models for decision making can be improved by integrating informed citizen and practitioner expertise into model building. Participatory modeling is an integrative process for combining technical, scientific knowledge with perspectives and insights from resident experts familiar with the operation and function of a given system. The result is a kind of shared representation of a system׳s structure and dynamics. Here we discuss the merits of participatory modeling in the context of social-ecological systems, and outline key considerations for its implementation.

The winter storms of January and February 2026 caused severe coastal damage along southwest England, reviving memories of the destructive 2013/14 winter and exposing persistent weaknesses in UK coastal resilience policy. Using the Slapton Sands gravel barrier system, in Devon, as a case study, this article argues that repeated damage to the village of Torcross and the A379 road section that runs along the barrier illustrates a broader national cycle of escalating coastal risk despite decades of scientific understanding and strategic planning through Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs). Although none of the winter 2026 storms were individually extreme, their rapid succession, sequencing, and coincidence with spring tides caused substantial erosion, infrastructure collapse, and property damage, highlighting the cumulative threat of compound events. The case study exemplifies how defended coastlines and transport corridors can function as "single points of failure," where disruption produces cascading social and economic consequences. While SMPs acknowledge the eventual need for "Managed Realignment," implementation remains slow, politically contentious, and operationally vague, with policy often defaulting to short-term "Hold the Line" responses. This creates an adaptation deficit between national ambitions for resilience and practical action on the ground. We emphasise that transformational adaptation - including managed realignment, infrastructure relocation and community transition - requires coordinated national leadership, statutory support, a consistent approach and socially just frameworks that prioritise participation and fairness. Current local and national governance structures remain insufficient to meet the pace and scale of climate-driven coastal change. Torcross, like many vulnerable coastal communities, serves as an early warning of broader systemic failure: sea-level rise and intensifying coastal hazards will increasingly force the UK to confront difficult choices about protection, retreat and relocation.

Motivated by observations of emergency road-maintenance crews in coastal settings, DOZER is a video game in which the player uses a bulldozer to clear sand from a beachfront road during a storm. DOZER is also a toy model in a formal sense: a heuristic tool for insight into the dynamics of real-time intervention in the physical processes of a natural hazard. Here, I introduce DOZER as both a game and a numerical model, and demonstrate its utility for exploring divergence between a human-altered environmental system and its natural counterpart. I also situate the mechanics of DOZER in the broader context of game design principles and philosophy. For models of systems in which adaptation is an important dynamic, ceding control of adaptive behaviours to a human player can enable novel model outcomes that random, probabilistic, deterministic, or genetic-programming approaches may not produce.

Coastal urban areas face increasing threats from sea-level rise and extreme weather events. Where population relocation is not feasible, hard-engineering defence measures are adopted to mitigate flooding. However, the implications of such interventions for surrounding coastal ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here we explored the effects of the recently inaugurated Mo.S.E. storm-surge barriers on hydrodynamics and wetland resilience within the Venice Lagoon-a highly anthropized environment that may foreshadow future adaptation in other coastal cities. Our analysis demonstrates that while the floodgates successfully protect urban areas, the barriers presently operate at the expense of wetland ecosystems, reducing tidal inundation and the associated delivery of mineral sediments essential to sustain vertical accretion and maintain elevation with rising sea levels. Comparison with optimized management scenarios shows that subtle adjustments to the timing of floodgate activation can markedly reduce these negative eco-geomorphological impacts, promoting a more sustainable balance between urban flood protection and ecosystem integrity.

This editorial introduces Area's new editorial team and offers a collective sense of why Area continues to be an important outlet for geographical scholarship.

Abstract Sinuous channel networks dissecting tidal wetlands are highly dynamic and are often abandoned as a result of channel captures and meander cutoffs. However, the effects of channel dynamics on blue carbon fluxes remain unclear. Analyses of abandoned tidal channels in the Venice Lagoon (Italy) demonstrate that they take up organic carbon at significantly faster rates than neighboring marshes. This is because, despite slightly lower sediment carbon density, abandoned tidal channels yield significantly higher rates of sediment vertical accretion owing to topographic accommodation and reduced flow velocities, which facilitate the deposition of particulate matter and debris. We estimate that abandoned tidal channels in Venice capture 17 tons of carbon annually, equivalent to 21 ha of marshes, despite covering only 3.5 ha in total. Hence we argue that abandoned tidal channels serve as hotspots for blue‐carbon accumulation and should be considered to improve estimates of carbon fluxes in coastal wetlands.

This article describes an exercise for a physical laboratory experiment designed to enable physical geography students to practice transferrable quantitative skills through inquiry-based learning. The exercise is a deliberately simplified physical model of storm-driven coastal overwash typical of low-lying coastal barrier systems. The experiment can be trialled in anything from a baking pan or plastic tub to a specialised flume; set-up requires an erodible barrier with a low height relative to its alongshore length. Flow across the barrier is called overwash, which leaves behind depositional features called washover. Students measure geometric characteristics, or morphometry, of the experimental washover and examine them with scaling relationships. Here I present a dataset of nearly 450 student measurements, along with a sample of my own, from six experimental trials to demonstrate that students with little or no preparatory training were able to successfully complete the exercise and collectively generate a dataset of washover morphometry that resembles scaling relationships from the published literature. Using inquiry-based observations of a physical process to steer morphometric measurements that in turn motivate methods for quantitative analysis may serve as an effective means of embedding quantitative training in a physical geography syllabus or programme curriculum.

The sinuous channels that wind through tidal coastal wetlands resemble meandering rivers. However, features indicative of active meandering over time, such as oxbow lakes and meander cutoffs, are challenging to find in tidal realms. Specifically, while alluvial plains shaped by meandering rivers are filled with scars of meander cutoffs, tidal coastal settings have been perceived by geomorphologists for much of the past century as lacking morphological evidence of cutoff events, even though both environments exhibit similar meander-planform dynamics and width-adjusted migration rates. This led to the broad interpretation that tidal and fluvial meanders differ morphodynamically.We re-examined this conclusion by identifying, measuring, and compiling examples of meander cutoffs from various tidal coastal wetlands and fluvial floodplains worldwide. We suggest that cutoffs in tidal meanders are far more widespread than previously thought, and the shapes and geometric properties of tidal and river cutoffs are indeed remarkably similar. This indicates that while tidal and fluvial environments differ in many ways, they nevertheless share the same physical mechanism affecting meander morphodynamical evolution.The perceived scarcity of tidal cutoffs is likely a result of pronounced channel density and hydrological connectivity in coastal wetlands, coupled with the reduced size of most tidal channels and dense vegetation cover. Moreover, despite allegedly similar forming mechanisms, morphodynamic differences arise after meanders have cut off. We observe that tidal meanders remain preferentially connected to the channel from which they originated, preventing the formation of crescent-shaped oxbow lakes and thus making tidal cutoffs more difficult to detect.While these factors do not erase tidal meander cutoffs, they collectively inhibit oxbow-lake formation and render tidal cutoffs ephemeral, hardly detectable geomorphic features. We thus argue that similar morphodynamic processes drive cutoff formation in tidal and fluvial landscapes, with differences arising only during post-cutoff evolution. This bears important implications for understanding the ecomorphodynamics of coastal wetlands and predicting their long-term evolution.

Stabilization of riverbanks by vegetation has long been considered necessary to sustain single-thread meandering rivers. However, observation of active meandering in modern barren landscapes challenges this assumption. Here, we investigate a globally distributed set of modern meandering rivers with varying riparian vegetation densities, using satellite imagery and statistical analyses of meander-form descriptors and migration rates. We show that vegetation enhances the coefficient of proportionality between channel curvature and migration rates at low curvatures, and that this effect wanes in curvier channels irrespective of vegetation density. By stabilizing low-curvature reaches and allowing meanders to gain sinuosity as channels migrate laterally, vegetation quantifiably affects river morphodynamics. Any causality between denser vegetation and higher meander sinuosity, however, cannot be inferred owing to more frequent avulsions in modern non-vegetated environments. By illustrating how vegetation affects channel mobility and floodplain reworking, our findings have implications for assessing carbon stocks and fluxes in river floodplains.

Sinuous channels wandering through coastal wetlands have been thought to lack lateral-migration features like meander cutoffs and oxbows, spurring the broad interpretation that tidal and fluvial meanders differ morphodynamically. Motivated by recent work showing similarities in planform dynamics between tidal and fluvial meandering channels, we analyzed meander neck cutoffs from diverse tidal and fluvial environments worldwide, and show that tidal cutoffs are widespread. Their perceived paucity stems from pronounced channel density and hydrological connectivity in coastal wetlands, comparatively small size of most tidal channels, and typically dense vegetation cover. Although these factors do not efface tidal meander cutoffs, they collectively inhibit oxbow formation and make tidal cutoffs ephemeral features that can escape detection. We argue that similar morphodynamic processes drive cutoff formation in tidal and fluvial landscapes, with differences arising only during post-cutoff evolution. Such process similarity has important implications for understanding coastal wetland ecomorphodynamics and predicting their long-term evolution. The sinuous channels that wander through tidal coastal wetlands look like meandering rivers. However, features of alluvial floodplains that indicate active river meandering over time, such as oxbow lakes and meander cutoffs, are difficult to find in tidal settings. Their apparent absence has led researchers to infer that tidal and fluvial meanders evolve differently. We re-examined this inference by identifying, measuring, and compiling examples of meander cutoffs from a variety of tidal coastal wetlands and fluvial floodplains worldwide. Our analysis suggests that the shapes and geometric properties of tidal and fluvial cutoffs are indeed remarkably similar. This indicates that while tidal and fluvial environments differ in many ways, they nevertheless share the same physical mechanism affecting meander morphodynamical evolution. Differences between tidal and fluvial meanders do arise after a meander is cut off. We observe that tidal meanders remain preferentially connected to the parent channel, preventing the formation of crescent-shaped oxbow lakes and thus making tidal cutoffs more difficult to detect. Our results indicate a close similarity in meandering channel behavior across tidal and fluvial systems, which opens new opportunities for how researchers model tidal wetlands, with important implications for the effective conservation and restoration of these critical ecosystems. Tidal meander cutoffs are far more common than typically thought and share remarkable morphometric similarities with fluvial counterpartsSimilar mechanisms trigger cutoffs in both tidal and fluvial landscapes, with differences arising only during post-cutoff evolutionTidal cutoffs seldom disconnect from parent channels and rarely form oxbows due to the high hydrological connectivity of tidal wetlands

The displacement of a river to a new position within its adjacent floodplain is called avulsion, and here we examine how a newly recognized style, called retrogradational avulsion, affects the surrounding floodplain in tropical rainforests using remote sensing. Retrogradational avulsions begin with a channel blockage that causes self-propagating upstream dechannelization and flooding. While this flooding results in vegetation die-off and floodplain sedimentation, few quantitative measurements of disturbance by retrogradational avulsions exist. Here, we first focus on land-cover change following a single retrogradational avulsion in Papua New Guinea from 2012 to 2021. During the avulsion, the river dechannelized 892 m upstream, and the parent channel width doubled. Using maximum likelihood image classification, we observed healthy vegetation fluctuated around 4.3 km(2), vegetation regrowth peaked in 2017 at 3.2 km(2), dead vegetation peaked in 2013 at 2.1 km(2), and visible extent of deposited sediment was greatest in 2015 at 0.44 km(2). We also examined 19 other retrogradational avulsions in Papua New Guinea and South America using NDVI. The area of floodplain disturbance (i.e., vegetation die-off and possible sedimentation) for each avulsion ranged from <1 to >13 km(2) and scaled with the dechannelization area. Comparing our plan-view disturbance results with FABDEM digital-elevation data and ICESat-2 surface elevation measurements, we hypothesize floodplain disturbance extent is a function of topographic relief. Our results also suggest that retrogradational avulsions, on average, perturb larger areas of forest compared to blowdowns, suggesting this might be an important disturbance regime that influences gap-filling regeneration in tropical rainforests.

Given the inevitability of sea-level rise, investigating processes of human-altered coastlines at the intermediate timescales of years to decades can sometimes feel like an exercise in futility. Returning to the big picture and long view of feedbacks, emergent dynamics, and wider context, here we offer 10 existential questions for research into human–coastal coupled systems.

Coastal barrier systems are low-lying environments that bear the brunt of storm impacts, with cumulative and complex consequences for barrier evolution. Most studies of barrier responses to storms examine what happens when water and sediment get driven landward across a barrier from its ocean side. Sherwood et al. (2023, ) investigate the effects of overland flow and sediment transport forced across a barrier in the opposite direction-from its sheltered side, seaward. Using high-resolution imagery of a barrier island observed before and after a hurricane, Sherwood et al. (2023, ) show that "outwash" flow across the barrier shifted several times more sediment by volume than is typically reported for beach and dune erosion from onshore forcing. Their findings are remarkable because they are not exceptional: a related survey of barriers along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the USA observed patterns of outwash morphology essentially everywhere. Insights into outwash morphology open exciting questions regarding the overlooked role of storm-driven seaward sediment transport in barrier dynamics, with important implications for post-storm barrier recovery and barrier evolution over decades to centuries. Plain Language Summary Coastal barrier systems-beaches backed by dunes, marshes, and often a lagoon or sound-offer natural protection to coastal floodplains by absorbing some of the physical impacts of storms, including hurricanes. Most studies of storm impacts on coastal barriers investigate changes that occur when a storm drives water and sediment landward, over a barrier from its ocean-facing side. But storms also drive sediment-laden flows in the opposite direction: over the back of a barrier from its more sheltered side, toward the ocean. Here, I highlight work by Sherwood et al. (2023, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022jf006934) that details extensive patterns of erosion and accretion from "outwash" flow seaward over a barrier during a hurricane. Added up over time, sediment shifting landward and seaward across a barrier shapes the barrier landscape and affects how the barrier may respond to future storm impacts. Sherwood et al. (2023, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022jf006934) offer findings with important implications for understanding how coastal barriers evolve in space and time, and address a question that is fundamental to many geomorphic systems: when a large volume of sediment moves during an extreme weather event, where does it all go?

Despite being exceptional concentrations of valuable economic assets, yachts and marinas are typically overlooked in the geography of coastal risk. Focusing on the Mediterranean, which hosts the majority of the world’s yacht activity, we examine three decades of yacht insurance claims in the context of natural hazards and marina development. We find indications that yachts and marinas manifest the same generic relationships between exposure, hazard, and vulnerability observed in terrestrial coastal-risk systems. Given the fundamental importance of yachts and marinas to nautical tourism and strategies for “Blue Economy” growth, particularly in Europe, the role of yachts and marinas in the dynamics of coastal risk must be better understood—but any such insight will first require standardised, comprehensive datasets of yacht movements and marina infrastructure.

In the UK, coastal flooding and erosion are two of the primary climate-related hazards to communities, businesses, and infrastructure. To better address the ramifications of those hazards, now and into the future, the UK needs to transform its scattered, frag-mented coastal data resources into a systematic, integrated portal for quality-assured, pub-licly accessible open data. Such a portal would support analyses of coastal risk and resilience by hosting, in addition to data layers for coastal flooding and erosion, a diverse array of spatial datasets for building footprints, infrastructure networks, land use, popula-tion, and various socio-economic measures and indicators derived from survey and census data. The portal would facilitate novel combinations of spatial data layers to yield scientifi-cally, societally, and economically beneficial insights into UK coastal systems.

[updated November 2023] This dataset comprises data and code used in "Rapid seaward expansion of seaport footprints worldwide" (Sengupta & Lazarus, 2023; https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01110-y). This repository includes three .csv files, one .xlsx file, and a .ipynb file: 'Sengupta_Lazarus_REC_1990_2020_v05.csv' – annual time series of seaward expansion (km^2) between 1990–2020 through coastal reclamation for 65 of the world's top 100 container seaports in 2020, as ranked by reported container throughput (Lloyd's List, 2021). Dataset includes Year, Seaport, Country, Region, and Reclaimed area (km^2) [raw measurement]. 'Sengupta_Lazarus_REC_TEU_2011_2020_v03.csv' – annual time series of seaward expansion (km^2) and reported container throughput (millions TEU) between 2011–2020 for 43 of the world's top 100 container seaports in 2020, as ranked by reported container throughput (Lloyd's List, 2021). Dataset includes Year, Seaport, Country, Region, Reclaimed area (km^2) [raw measurement], and TEU (millions), collated from archived Lloyd's List reports. 'Sengupta_Lazarus_REC_TEU_totals_v04.csv' – Simplified dataset listing total seaward expansion (km^2) and container throughput in 2020 for 65 of the world's top 100 container seaports in 2020, as ranked by reported container throughput (Lloyd's List, 2021). Dataset includes Seaport, Country, Region, Reclaimed area (km^2) [raw measurement], ranked list of seaports by expansion extent, and TEU (millions) handled in 2020, and Lloyd's List rank in 2020 (Lloyd's List, 2021). 'Sengupta_Lazarus_2023_ports_excluded_v2.xlsx' – contains list of 35 ports excluded from thus analysis because they are either not on an open coastline (e.g. estuarine, riverine) or expanded less than 1 km^2 seaward between 1990–2020. 'RECLAIM_port_trajectories_v11.ipynb' – Jupyter notebook for data wrangling and plotting figures presented in Sengupta & Lazarus (2023). (Note that this notebook does not produce the map-based figures presented in that work.) The method for calculating reclaimed area over time in Google Earth Engine (GEE) is described in Sengupta et al. (2023), and the GEE code is available here: https://github.com/dhritirajsen/Seaport_reclamation These data and code are also available here: https://github.com/edlazarus/Seaports

As global maritime traffic increases, seaports grow to accommodate and compete for higher volumes of trade throughput. However, growth trajectories of seaport footprints around the world have gone unmeasured, likely because of a lack of readily available spatio-temporal data. Here, we use geospatial analysis of global satellite imagery from 1990–2020 to show that 65 seaports among the world's top 100 container ports, as ranked by reported throughput, have been expanding rapidly seaward. Collectively, these seaports have added approximately 978 km2 in gross port area in three decades through coastal land reclamation. We also find that the relationship between footprint expansion and throughput volume is highly variable among seaports. Understanding patterns of seaport expansion in space and time informs global assessments of critical infrastructure and supply chain vulnerability to climate-driven hazard. Seaport expansion also sets up complex trade-offs in the context of environmental impacts and climate adaptation.

Coastal defences have long provided protection from erosion and flooding to cities, towns and villages. In many parts of the world, continued defence is being questioned due to both environmental, sustainability and economic considerations. This is exemplified in England and Wales, where strategic Shoreline Management Plans envisage realignment of many protected coasts, often with low population densities, over the coming decades. The policy transition from protection to realignment is often resisted by affected communities and can have high political costs. Whilst some preparations for such transitions have been made, the communities affected are often not fully aware of the implications of policy change, and this brings the potential for blight. In this paper, we investigate the challenges of implementing transitions in coastal policy within England and Wales. The analysis is based on data obtained from three workshops held in 2019 that were attended by council members, engineers, planners, scientists and other relevant professionals. Five conditions are found to promote contention: (i) policy actors with competing priorities and different decision making time frames (immediate to decadal to a century); (ii) divergence between regulations and ad hoc political decisions (e.g. in relation to the demand for new housing); (iii) limited or non-existent funding to support policy transition; (iv) community expectation that protection is forever; and (v) a disconnection between people and ongoing coastal change. Our research indicates that transitions can be better supported through: (1) integrated multi-scalar preparedness for coastal change; (2) an accessible evidence base and future vision to nurture political confidence in adaptation; and (3) defined, time-bound and accessible diverse funding streams to achieve transitions. Critically, these generic actions need to be embedded within the local political and planning system to facilitate transition to more sustainable coasts and their communities.

The long, open-ended period of recovery from a disaster event is the phase of a disaster that the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies struggles to understand. In the process of rebuilding, places do not simply reset – they transform, often in ways that confound any reduction of disaster risk, instead making people and settings more vulnerable to future hazard events. Reducing disaster risk is regarded as a global priority, but policies intended to reduce disaster risk have been largely ineffective. This obduracy represents a grand challenge in disaster studies. Here, I propose that the correlated trends of runaway economic costs of disaster events, growing social inequity, environmental degradation, and resistance to policy intervention in disaster settings are hallmark indicators of a system trap – a dynamic in which self-reinforcing feedbacks drive a system toward an undesirable and seemingly inescapable state, with negative consequences that tend to amplify each other over time. I offer that these trends in disaster settings are the collective expression of an especially powerful and distinct kind of system trap, which here I term the "disaster trap" – a new theoretical concept to help explain and address runaway disaster risk. I suggest that disaster traps are likely strongest in tourism-dominated coastal settings with high exposure to tropical cyclones and colonial histories of racial capitalism, which I explore with an empirical illustration from Antigua & Barbuda. Formalising a linkage between gilded and safe-development traps matters because their effects likely compound each other nonlinearly, such that disaster risk only increases and disaster risk reduction becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. Addressing traps requires understanding them as dynamic systems, described as fundamentally and completely as possible – their components, mechanisms, drivers, and structure – in order to reveal when and where interventions might be most effective at reducing disaster risk.

Approaching 30 years since its publication in Progress in Physical Geography, Nordstrom's work from 1994 reads like an uncannily current synopsis of grand challenges in interdisciplinary coastal science. The article is a playbook of testable hypotheses for emerging and future empirical coastal research.