Coastal Erosion Responses for Alaska - the National Sea Grant ...

Coastal Erosion Responses for Alaska: Workshop Proceedings
Alaska Sea Grant College Program • AK-SG-06-03, 2006
Introduction
Orson P. Smith
University of Alaska Anchorage, School of Engineering, Anchorage, Alaska
(Workshop Organizing Committee Chair)
Coastal erosion and its physical causes are as old as the oceans. As a concern,
coastal erosion is as old as civilization. This is not a workshop on climate
change. Global warming is a contributing factor to current trends in coastal
erosion, but should not become an alibi for short-sighted human use of the
shoreline.
Alaska is a young state. Our oldest infrastructure is barely a century in age.
Most existing shoreline construction is a few decades old or less. Compared to
thousands of years of coastal development in other areas of the world, we in
Alaska have little knowledge of our impact on the natural processes and little
recorded information about the processes themselves. Our records of winds,
waves, and water levels are short. Where coastal weather data exist, measurements
have often been made at an airstrip substantially removed from the
shore and strongly affected by the land between.
Our situation as North America’s developing country provides both challenges
and opportunities with regard to coastal erosion responses. We may
not know the trends as well as our sister coastal states, but we can learn from
tribulations elsewhere. We need not educate ourselves solely by trial and error.
We can study the design and history of older coastal developments and seek
coastal erosion responses suited to our Alaska circumstances.
This workshop is the ninth in an annual series with the bridging theme
of science-to-engineering. You can argue that engineering is never more than
applied science and I would agree. Coastal engineering is a specialty with
particularly strong ties to scientific disciplines including meteorology, oceanography,
geology, and physics. The first three are fairly obvious to relate and we
mustn’t forget that the twenty-first century is an era of dependence on exotic
instrumentation applying esoteric principles of physics. A passing knowledge
of coastal processes and measurements is not sufficient for the best decisions in
response to coastal erosion. Coastal engineering is a risky business with plenty
of opportunity to make matters worse, in spite of good intentions.
Engineers are required by ethics codes of their professional societies
and by their licensing boards to do good work and protect the public safety.