Are our coastlines being washed away?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science, Technology

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Around the world, coastlines are constantly changing due to the power of waves, currents and tides. Coastal areas are also some of the most heavily populated and developed land areas in the world. So it’s not hard to see how the natural process of coastal erosion can cause serious problems for us.

It’s an issue that’s been bothering CrowdScience listener Anne in Miami Beach, Florida. She can see the beach from her window and wonders why after every storm, several trucks arrive to dump more sand on it.

In this first of two programmes, CrowdScience visits Anne’s home in south Florida and finds out how erosion threatens Florida’s famous beaches. Caroline Steel speaks to geoscientist Dr Tiffany Roberts Briggs and hears why it’s such a problem for this tourist-reliant state. Tiffany explains the delicate balance between natural processes and human infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico declared a state of emergency in April 2023 due to coastal erosion. Caroline witnesses the impacts of erosion first-hand, as Ruperto Chaparro shows her abandoned houses crumbling into the sea.

But how can we quantify the rate of erosion? Dr Kevian Perez in the Graduate School of Planning at University of Puerto Rico explains the methods they use to monitor Puerto Rico’s coastlines, and how they are evaluating the effectiveness of different mitigation methods.

However, some of the methods used to protect coastal communities from the encroaching sea have done more harm than good. So what are the best ways to tackle this problem? That’s what we’ll be exploring in next week’s programme.

Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Hannah Fisher Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Liz Tuohy Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood and Bob Nettles

Featuring: Dr Tiffany Roberts Briggs, Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University Ruperto Chaparro, Director of Sea Grant Programme, University of Puerto Rico Anabela Fuentes Garcia, Villa Cristiana community leader Dr Kevian Perez, researcher at the Coastal Research and Planning Institute of Puerto Rico at the Graduate School of Planning

(Photo: Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Credit: Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. So it's quite loud. It does sound like we're stood next to a construction site.
0:37.0	What's happening?
0:40.0	So you can see here we're actually at a part of the beach that's not as wide.
0:44.0	Each one of these trucks is bringing in sand, they're dumping it onto the beach,
0:48.0	and then the construction vehicles are coming in,
0:51.0	scooping it up, pushing it towards the ocean to widen the beach.
0:55.0	You're listening to crowd science on the BBC World Service.
1:00.0	I'm Caroline Steele and this is Tiffany Roberts Briggs, a geoscientist.
1:05.0	And so these trucks are bringing in the sand.
1:09.0	She's taken me to a construction site in Florida, which also happens to be a beautiful beach.
1:15.0	And then there's other machines that are coming in behind that and flattening it out and reshaping it into a nice wide beach.
1:24.7	It was a bit jarring, seeing all these noisy polluting machines at work to create a picture
1:29.9	perfect beachfront.
1:32.0	We'll hear more about why they're doing it later on in the
1:34.4	show, but the reason why we're here is because it inspired this week's
1:37.8	listener's question. She lives just a few miles south so we paid her a
	...

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