Whilst climate change has been regarded as a growing concern in recent years due the disruptive and detrimental effects experienced across the globe, one of its most compelling and threatening evidence is Sea Level Rise (SLR). This phenomenon is more prominent in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and such islands are already facing escalating associated environmental threats, causing social and economic disruptions as well as insecurities. Amongst the SIDS, the coastal areas of Mauritius are considered among the most vulnerable to SLR, where statistics showed that between the years 1987 and 2007, an annual increase of 2.1 mm in the sea level has been observed around Mauritius. Although SLR has various associated impacts, limited work has been undertaken to assess the coastal vulnerability of the impacts of SLR for Mauritius and to compute the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) of the island. Taking cognizance of this limitation, the purpose of this paper is to quantify, prioritize and critically assess the vulnerability of key impacts of sea level rise on the coastal areas of Mauritius following computation of a CVI. In this process, five key research questions are answered towards calculating the CVI of the island to eventually conceptualize a framework with the aim to reduce the adverse impacts of SLR on coastal zones of Mauritius. Findings of this study aim at the advancement of resilience and increased sustainability of coastal areas to the impacts of SLR.

Mauritius is a popular destination for tourists who visit the island for the sun, sea and sand in addition to tourism activities. Although the consumption of tourism activities brings various benefits to the island, there have been concerns over the adverse impacts of such activities on the marine and coastal environment, such as loss of biodiversity and disturbances caused to marine plants and animals. In order to reduce the impacts of these activities on the environment, actions from both the providers and consumers of such activities, notably leisure operators and tourists, are necessary. This paper investigates and presents findings on the perspectives of leisure operators and tourists on the environmental impacts of coastal recreational tourism activities, through answering four research questions. Following a survey conducted within the island, findings revealed a significant negative overall linear relationship between tourism activities and the negative impacts on the environment. The survey provided a means to rank the tourism activities in terms of the harms caused to the environment along with the significance of their adverse impacts. In addition, for engaging leisure operators and tourists towards sustainably minimizing the environmental impacts of tourism-related activities, a framework has been proposed within this paper.

Coastal zones are highly utilised making the management thereof complex. To support this many coastal nations have developed coast specific legislation; South Africa being no exception. However, implementation remains the biggest hurdle; some of the best environmental legislation is offered but the skills, capacity and financial resources to achieve this are lacking. National governments have made efforts to ensure knowledge transfer and capacity building for ICM, but is this enough? Is there is a real improvement in the capacity of managers and decision makers and are we seeing resultant effective ICM? This paper considers the success of traditional training for knowledge transfer and capacity building within KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) (South Africa). It further reviews a KZN specific information support tool to aid in on-going knowledge building and storing of institutional information and evaluates if this is complementary to traditional approaches. While participants of traditional training sessions gain value from these, the link to implementation is largely lacking. This coupled with high staff turnover rates creates a barrier to objectives of the ICM Act. In comparison the use of an information support tool potentially adds value by storing information and data in a readily available format and serves as an `institutional information bank', contributing to improved, informed coastal decision making.

Coastal communities and the coastal zone are under increasing threat from both climate change and anthropogenic development. As the climate changes, sea level is expected to rise causing instances of flooding as well as increased storm intensity triggering increased coastal erosion and coastal flooding along vulnerable shorelines. San Mateo County, the basis of this research is one of the most vulnerable areas in the United States for coastal flooding, erosion and climate change. San Mateo County's geography is unique in the sense that the County is set on a narrow peninsula surrounded by the San Francisco Bay on the East and the Pacific Ocean on the West. The population is concentrated primarily on the "bay side" whereas the population is considerably less dense on the "coast side" adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. Research was conducted in order to measure stakeholder perception of risk and to uncover discrepancies between risk identified by a coastal vulnerability index (CVI) and risk as perceived by social, economic and environmental stakeholders. Measuring perception of risks and identifying discrepancies is exceptionally important to learn as the County grapples with where to invest resources to build resilience to sea level rise, flooding and erosion.

In macrotidal environments, temporal variation in exposed spring tidal beach profiles is often used for assessment of morphological change, but variability in data acquisition curtails analysis to the shortest profile length. This paper describes a quantitative method maximising profile length that enables areas of concern reported by means of a traffic light system of red, amber and green. This refined model, originally introduced in 2018, Utilises, limits set statistically using confidence intervals (90%ile and 99%ile), calculated for either side of average beach levels derived from historic datasets. The visual output identifies relative levels of concern and exceedance of normal parameters would trigger higher levels of assessment defined by a predetermined management framework and the management response would vary depending on the coastal environment being assessed.

Coastal development in small islands needs adapting to climate and ecosystem changes in the Anthropocene era. Understanding variability of coastal vulnerability along the entire coastline informs coastal planning and management at an island-wide scale as some coastal stretches are more appropriate for big-scale development, while others require additional coastal protection and/or ecosystem conservation. To date, few researches focused on developing macro-scale coastal vulnerability index at an island or archipelagic-scale. This paper fills a knowledge gap by developing an integrated coastal vulnerability index (ICVI) for nine small islands in the Azores archipelago. Considering that degree of vulnerability varies according to human-environment traits of each coastal stretch, this paper characterises integrated coastal vulnerability according to three broad attributes, i.e. exposure to external stressors, biophysical features and socioeconomic characteristics. Using field work, semi-quantitative analysis and GIS, ICVI is a simple and relatively quick approach that provides a broad overview of coastal vulnerability in small island context. A set of six accessible and representative parameters was employed as indicators for this vulnerability assessment, i.e. type of cliff; type of beach; coastal defences; exposure to swell/storm waves; outcrop flooded and land-use. The entire coastline of each island was divided into segments according to their geomorphic compartments and subsequently assigned with a relative ICVI value. Each segment was ranked into five classes ranging from very low to very high based on its relative degree of vulnerability. While majority of the coasts are of moderate relative vulnerability in the Azores, vulnerability varies broadly along the coast between low, moderate and high. The ICVI approach serves as a useful decision support tool to facilitate effective planning and management for the Azores small islands and the methodology has the flexibility of being scaled deep by adding more indicators where necessary and available or scaled out to other small islands.

Monitoring of the coastline and coastal processes, in particular sediment movement, is vital to ensure that erosion response is appropriate given the dynamic nature of coastal systems. This should take place regularly over long periods and it is important that data are collected from submerged portions of the littoral zone, as well as the visible beach. This highlights two limitations in existing coastal monitoring techniques: 1. they require largely manual operation and 2. are limited to the visible beach, which results in an incomplete picture of what is happening in the coastal zone. Due to the current difficulties in gathering data beneath the sea surface, this paper reviews wireless sensor network (WSN) technology as a means to overcome these limitations. Analysis showed that WSNs are a promising technology for coastal monitoring, not only in terms of overcoming limitations, but also in terms of cost, safety, and the size of areas they are able to monitor. Previous work using WSNs in this environment is somewhat limited, especially as most current methods are largely limited to the visible beach, and do not consider submerged areas of the coastal zone. From consideration of the physical environment, geological and geographical processes, and informed by advances in technology, research gaps are identified, discussed and evaluated to provide strategies for implementation of WSNs to monitor sediment transport.

Abstract This chapter describes climate change, coastal processes and shoreline management and, using international examples, show the evolution of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). ICZM strategies from high level to operational implementation will then be focused through the lens of a case study in Fairbourne, Wales, UK, which is a popular tourist destination and where there have been unintended consequences of a regional ICZM strategy. The chapter concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and recommendations for effective ICZM strategies in response to climate change.

The precise delineation of coastal areas subject to past, present, and future erosive processes plays a fundamental role in coastal risk management. Within this framework, satellite data represent a valuable synoptic and multi-temporal information source. Therefore, this research integrated remote sensing and GIS techniques for mapping and modeling shoreline evolution through time. Long-term shoreline's proxy rates of advance and retreat were determined using Landsat data from the mid-1980s to 2011 and subsequently, a short-term scenario (3years) was predicted and validated. Two different coastal environments, Oceanic and Mediterranean, were investigated. In the first, different proxies were analyzed, thereby enabling a multi-proxy analysis. Findings showed that the method provided more accurate results in higher energy environments (Oceanic) and where the coastline is not urbanized. Results also highlighted the importance of performing multi-proxy analyses in given study areas, to more reliably define shoreline modeling. Importantly, during the analyses, particular attention was given to assessing uncertainty, which is crucial when outcomes of scientific research are considered for management.

Tidal Lagoon Plc proposes UK-based construction of a hydro-electrical generating facility using the natural ebb and flow of the tide in Swansea Bay, South Wales. This will be the first of its type in the world and to verify its ecological footprint does not adversely affect the normal fluctuations of sediment in the bay, a regime was put in place to monitor potential intertidal morphological change before, during and post construction. An adaptive management strategy was developed to identify coastal changes outside normal evolutionary patterns and a baseline with a monitoring strategy to detect intertidal area change was developed from analysis of historic beach profile data collected between 1998 and 2013. The resulting profile envelope was utilised to define natural variation and evaluated against this was beach level data collected between 2015 and 2016. ‘Morphostat’, a novel application for monitoring beach level changes was developed to provide visual indication of areas of concern revealed from analysis against statistical parameters that is organised into tidal ladder regions. Users are also provided with a quantitative result that enables areas of concern to be identified and trigger levels to be defined. Morphostat visual output provides a traffic light system of Red, Amber and Green that identifies relative levels of concern. Here, exceedance of normal parameters will trigger higher levels of assessment against a predetermined management framework that would include forcing agents such as waves and storms etc. Although initially developed to monitor Swansea Bay, Morphostat can be applied elsewhere in the world for any tidal range, tidal ladder configuration and variable profile length, making it ideal as a first line tool to determine if more detailed assessments are needed. Morphostat is therefore a useful shoreline monitoring tool for underpinning intervention/no intervention policies. It will facilitate assessment of risk, especially from climate change, where beach change can be categorised as within or outside historical trends, thereby improving future high level strategic decision making, allocation of financial resources and coastal zone management, not only in the UK but on a more global scale.

As a consequence of climate change, coastal communities worldwide are subject to increased risk from sea-level rise and more intense storms. Therefore, it is important for coastal managers to have focused site specific data on present and predicted climate change impacts in order to determine shoreline vulnerability. There are few UK studies that characterise coastal vulnerability, while nearly all global work has concentrated on geomorphological and to a lesser extent, socio-economic aspects. In response, the present study developed a new Physical Coastal Vulnerability Index (PCVI) and applied it to eleven UK sites, seven in England, three in Wales and one in Scotland. PCVI results were then compared and contrasted with a new Fiscal Coastal Vulnerability Index (FCVI), which enabled coastal areas to be visually classified in one of four categories to inform relative risk. Both indices were subsequently integrated into a Combined Coastal Vulnerability Index (CCVI). Results showed that Great Yarmouth and Aberystwyth were highly vulnerable, while Llanelli and Lynmouth were least vulnerable, and the importance of integrating both indices is demonstrated by modified overall vulnerability assessments. Therefore, CCVI provides a simple to use shoreline monitoring tool which is particularly suitable for assessment of risk. The indices support coastal planning, including intervention or no active intervention policies, and thereby benefitting a range of stakeholders. CCVI works at local, regional and international scales, and identifies vulnerable locations. Consequently, these indices will inform management strategies to improve coastal resilience under various sea level rise and climate change scenarios.

Climate change will cause increased coastal erosion and flooding along vulnerable shorelines and, therefore, to assess risk along the coastline and bayline of San Mateo County, a coastal vulnerability index (CVI) was used. San Mateo County is on a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, and therefore has both bay and ocean shorelines. The CVI measured physical parameters such as beach width, distance to 20 meter isobath, distance of vegetation behind the back beach, dune width and percentage rocky outcrop in order to produce relative vulnerabilities along both ocean and bay shorelines. Results found significant differences between overall vulnerabilities of the coastside and the bayside, which are important because governing bodies that manage San Mateo County are responsible for decision making on both sides. For example, when assessing distance to the 20 meter isobath, the coastside has several sites where it is very close to the shoreline, whereas the 20 meter isobath does not exist on the bayside because San Francisco Bay is very shallow adjacent to San Mateo County. The ramifications of this is that the bayside could be less vulnerable to storm powered wave damage compared to the coastside but is more vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise. Other findings revealed that the lack of sand dunes and beaches on the bayside will make the bayside more vulnerable to damage from wind waves, sea level rise or king tide events. San Mateo County does not have many areas with a high percentage of rocky outcrop on either bayside or coastside. This suggests that the San Mateo shoreline as a whole is vulnerable to waves since they will be breaking on weaker shore geology. Vulnerabilities are also compared with media coverage of property loss following recent storms with challenges faced by governing bodies identified.

An evaluation of the present day status of a coastline is fundamental in deciding whether to actively manage or to refrain from intervention. Unfortunately, with climate change and assessments of acceptable risk based on ongoing costs to defend, decisions need to be taken that reduce difficult and expensive decisions for future generations, i.e. sustainable management of the shoreline. The coastline provides economic opportunities, and tourism is one of the main stakeholders at risk from managed retreat and no active intervention decisions. Therefore, which aspect of risk takes priority, as barriers to effective Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) are inadequate capacity and finance? This paper shows the consequences of taking 'managed retreat' and 'no active intervention' decisions with no implementation strategy in place. The economic consequences for coastal stakeholders does not only include loss of tourism income but also assets and residential properties. Established processes for establishing risk and evidence gathering are questioned with recommendations for future strategies made. Subsequently, arguments are put forward that initial large scale assessments should be supplemented by smaller scale studies when decisions of 'managed retreat' and 'no active intervention' are proposed. Assessments should also include costs of lost business and infrastructure.

Marine Protected Areas (MPA) are one of the several means of protecting ocean biodiversity and are fundamental to the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 of 2010. However, many existing reserves are inefficient in meeting current conservation goals and are questioned regarding their habitat representivity. This paper assesses the efficiency of existing Welsh reserves in meeting conservation goals, including implications of changing objectives. Marxan conservation planning software was used to determine 20 broad-scale habitat types found in territorial seas, using data obtained from the European Environment Agency's Level 3 Predicted EUNIS Habitats GIS dataset. Results demonstrated that the current Welsh MPA network, even at the lowest conservation targets (≤10%), fails to suitably represent more than two-thirds of the broad-scale habitats found in its coastal waters. Subsequently, a range of alternative reserve design scenarios was developed to reduce inefficiency opportunity costs. Analysis indicated that an increase of less than 5% in total reserve area, plus a retention of 75% of the current network area, would create a new network to meet or exceed all stated conservation goals. Therefore, existing reserves can be incorporated into an efficient, ecologically representative network that reduces international conservation opportunity costs.

The Nigerian agricultural sector is threatened by changing weather patterns that has been shown to have been influenced by climate change. This work investigates how environmental forcing influenced crop productivity over a 30-year period in Enugu State, Nigeria. Environmental components such as, precipitation, humidity and extreme temperatures were directly compared with annual crop yield variations of the key staple food crops. Regression models constructed around the Environmental forcing data showed increasing temporal trends in all assess areas, with R2 values that ranged between 1% and 23%. While, similar models related to crop yield also identified increasing trend in most crops, an important exception being Yam and Melon with R2 values ranging between 4% and 70%. Fertilizer use dramatically increased during the same period, but no correlation could be found with overall crop yield. Pearson correlation matrices were mostly positive between environmental forcing with crop yield but highlighted that Yam production was negatively influenced by increasing precipitation and humidity will precipitation was positively correlated with melon yield. A study conducted using questionnaires assessed the farming communities knowledge, awareness and perception of climate change (n=227). Result show that 61% of respondent are experiencing climatic impacts, while 63% are concerned of potential effects. Further, 55% believe that it is already too late to do anything to mitigate against likely consequences. In terms of knowledge and information sources, most farmers questioned (64%) sources their information from the media. This poses challenges for more robust scientific methods and dissemination of that data, something that needs to be considered by local, regional and international government and policy makers. Questionnaire evaluations showed that the majority of Nigerian farmers were fully aware of climate change and its impacts, with most complaining that due to higher costs there was little or nothing they could do to address the issues. Furthermore, 64% of Nigerian farmers trusted information received from mass media, while the majority attributed climate change to anthropogenic factors (41%). Results showed that most farmers were more concerned about increasing rainfall and drought than other environmental issues.

Jizan is one of the Saudi Arabian coastal cities endowed with diverse natural settings, which includes Ash Shuqayq in the north, Turfah in the centre and Jizan in the South. This work analysed specific environmental characteristics, such as spits, sabkhas and wadis. Assessments used Landsat imagery to examine coastal change between 1973 and 2011. The cumulative temporal change identified regression trends given by coefficients of determination that explained a significant percentage of data variation for Jizan (R 2 = 69%) and Turfah (R 2 = 72%), while Ash Shuqayq was insignificant (R 2 = 14%). Inter-survey results predicted future change, although trends were not significant, i.e. Jizan (R 2 = 22%), Turfah (R 2 = 14%) and Ash Shuqayq (R 2 = 3 and 61% with outlying value removed). Aerial photos showed regional coastal changes, which included a maximum accretion of 36.4 m and maximum erosion of 12.9 m. These are scientifically effective techniques to monitor regional coastal change, i.e. erosion and accretion and identified rates of 0.59, 1.80 and 3.53 myr−1 for Ash Shuqayq, Turfah and Jizan. Changes were linked to infrastructure developments, e.g. tourism, port development and natural causes, e.g. spit formations and wadi outfalls.

Being regarded as a problem of global dimensions, marine litter has been a growing concern that affects human beings, wildlife and the economic health of coastal communities to varying degrees. Due to its involvement with human behavior, marine littering has been regarded as a cultural matter encompassing macro and micro level aspects. At the micro or individual level, behavior and behavioral motivation of an individual are driven by perception of that person while at the macro or societal level, aspects including policies and legislations influence behavior. This paper investigates marine littering through the macro-micro level lenses in order to analyze and recommend how anti-littering behavior can be improved and sustained. Using Coleman's model of micro-macro relations, research questions are formulated and investigated through a social survey. Results showed important differences in perceptions among participating groups and to address key issues, potential actions are proposed along with a framework to sustain anti-littering behavior.

Coastal areas are under increasing pressure driven by demands for coastal space, primarily though population growth, in migration and the need for space for socioeconomic activities. The pressures and associated changes to the coastal environment need to be managed to ensure long-term sustainability. South Africa has enacted an Integrated Coastal Management Act (ICM Act) to facilitate dedicated management of its coastal environment. The implementation has been met with a number of challenges, primarily relating to financial and human capacity constraints, particularly at the local government level. Given that the ICM Act devolves powers to local government, it is imperative that implementation challenges be addressed. This paper focuses on KwaZulu-Natal, one of four South African coastal regions, which is a renowned tourist destination and home to 11.1 million people (Statistics South Africa 2015). This paper considers the state of coastal management, as well as implementation challenges being experienced at a local governance level, and highlights ways to address these. Data were acquired through questionnaire surveys and semistructured interviews. The Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework was used to identify relevant ICM issues and concerns and develop potential actions for improving the implementation of coastal management activities and the ICM Act. In the assessment of the ICM governance and implementation to date, a key concern identified was a general lack of coastal management knowledge among officials. It was specifically identified that knowledgeable management and capacity-building required championing from the provincial government in order to more efficiently and effectively implement the objectives of the ICM Act through an improved understanding of the coastal environment, its functioning and management.

Three dimensional terrestrial laser scanners have the potential to provide new insights into multidisciplinary coastal studies due to the extremely high spatial data resolution, speed of surveys and availability of additional parameters, namely return signal intensity and RGB color information. Not only can high resolution morphological maps be produced, but quantities such as sediment type, surface roughness, surface moisture and vegetation cover can be inferred from the point density and additional parameters. This chapter firstly provides a review of the state of the art of use of terrestrial laser scanners in coastal environments, paying particular attention to the use of data abundance to derive additional information beyond morphology. Terrestrial laser scanners have been used more extensively in other fields of study and hence relevant studies from these sectors are also described. Secondly a case study will be presented of terrestrial laser scanner usage: a terrestrial laser scanner has been used to study barrier and cusp evolution on a composite sand-gravel beach. This will demonstrate the scanners ability to measure fine scale morphological features, surface roughness and will demonstrate techniques to define sand and gravel regions via RGB color properties. Finally some discussion into the future potential and caveats to the use of terrestrial laser scanners are presented. These caveats are primarily the short range of many instruments and the data surplus for some more uniform coastlines. These mean that the appropriateness of a terrestrial laser scanner survey will depend upon both the site and the scales of the physical processes being investigated.

The morphological change of a headland bay beach—Tenby, West Wales, UK—was analysed over a 73-year period (1941–2014). Geo-referenced aerial photographs were used to extract shoreline positions which were subsequently compared with wave models based on storm event data. From the 1941 baseline, results showed shoreline change rates reduced over time with regression models enabling a prediction of shoreline equilibrium circa 2061. Further temporal analyses showed southern and central sector erosion and northern accretion, while models identified long-term plan-form rotation, i.e., a negative phase relationship between beach extremities and a change from negative to positive correlation within the more stable central sector. Models were then used in conjunction with an empirical 2nd order polynomial equation to predict the 2061 longshore equilibrium shoreline position under current environmental conditions. Results agreed with previous regional research which showed that dominant south and southwesterly wave regimes influence south to north longshore drift with counter drift generated by less dominant easterly regimes. The equilibrium shoreline was also used to underpin flood and inundation assessments, identifying areas at risk and strategies to increase resilience. UK shoreline management plans evaluate coastal vulnerability based upon temporal epochs of 20, 50 and 100 years. Therefore, this research evaluating datasets spanning 73 years has demonstrated the effectiveness of linear regression in integrating temporal and spatial consequences of sea level rise and storms. The developed models can be used to predict future shoreline positions aligned with shoreline management plan epochs and inform embayed beach shoreline assessments at local, regional and international scales, by identifying locations of vulnerability and enabling the development of management strategies to improve resilience under scenarios of sea level rise and climate change.