The Southeast Florida Coastal Zone (SFCZ): A Cascade of Natural, Biological, and Human-Induced Hazards
The Southeast Florida Coastal Zone (SFCZ), the southern part of the South Atlantic Coastal Zone (SACZ), is an exemplar of a developed, low-lying coastal zone that is prone to a wide range of coastal hazards. Threats to environmental integrity, infrastruct
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The Southeast Florida Coastal Zone (SFCZ): A Cascade of Natural, Biological, and Human-Induced Hazards Charles W. Finkl and Christopher Makowski
Abstract The Southeast Florida Coastal Zone (SFCZ), the southern part of the South Atlantic Coastal Zone (SACZ), is an exemplar of a developed, low-lying coastal zone that is prone to a wide range of coastal hazards. Threats to environmental integrity, infrastructure, and human wellbeing include both the frequent occurrence of natural meteohydrological disturbances, hazardous marine life interactions, and human-induced events. Natural hazards are mainly centered on storms and impacts from wind damage, shore erosion, flooding, and rip currents. Anthropogenic hazards, aside from dramatic or obvious events such as ship groundings, are caused by human endeavors that are regarded as normal day-to-day activities but which invisibly lead to land degradation in agricultural areas and urban settings, as well as the pollution of coastal marine environments through nutrient loading and sewage outfall dumping. Additionally, managerial positionalities that defeat sustainable development contribute to human-induced coastal hazards. Furthermore, increased human interaction with the coastal marine environment now leads to hazardous contact with biological fauna along coastal environments on both land and in the water. Release of non-native, invasive species in this subtropical coastal zone also poses a whole new range of potential hazards ranging from the loss of native species to a coastal population threatened by dangerous animals. These examples from the SFCZ also apply to many sensitive coastal marine environments around the world where increasing population densities multiply risks that eventually cascade into definable potential disaster zones.
C.W. Finkl (*) • C. Makowski Department of Geosciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA Coastal Education & Research Foundation (CERF), Coconut Creek, FL 33073, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] C.W. Finkl (ed.), Coastal Hazards, Coastal Research Library 6, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5234-4_1, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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C.W. Finkl and C. Makowski
Introduction
Developed coasts the world over are characterized by urban sprawl and industrialcommercial complexes that are situated in sensitive ecological environments or dynamic high-energy settings. Development and its supporting infrastructure impinges on surrounding habitats that becomes compromised by pollution, over use, or fractionation into ever smaller natural parcels that eventually cannot function as a viable ecosystem. This scenario is the same throughout the world where populations multiply in coastal zones. The South Atlantic Coastal Zone (SACZ) (Finkl 1983) and its subset, the subtropical southeast Florida coastal zone (SFCZ), is no exception and is perhaps an example par excellence of where many coastal regions are headed. Developed shores threaten lo
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