Developed Coasts

Humans are an important process in coastal evolution. Landforms are being directly eliminated, trampled, reshaped, mobilized, stabilized, or affected indirectly by human actions outside their boundaries. Buildings and support infrastructure directly alter processes and patterns of deposition and indirectly influence landforms as a result of human actions to maintain or protect facilities. Not all human actions are destructive to landforms. Beaches can be restored through nourishment operations, and dunes can be rebuilt, aided by sand fences and vegetation plantings. Restrictions in space and ongoing human attempts to modify landforms alter them from their former appearance, but many natural and human-use values can be provided by human-altered landforms through careful management. Compromise solutions will be required to accommodate nature while retaining recreational and protective values of landforms in restricted space. Many new and interesting research opportunities are available for geomorphologists working on human altered coasts, but the temporal and spatial scales of their investigations may be more restricted, while the number of variables they address may be increased.