Publications

Due to the effects of climate change over the course of the next century, the combination of rising sea levels, severe storms, and coastal change will threaten the sustainability of coastal communities, development, and ecosystems as we know them today. To clearly identify coastal vulnerabilities and develop appropriate adaptation strategies due to projected increased levels of coastal...

The Queen Charlotte Fault defines the Pacific–North America transform plate boundary in western Canada and southeastern Alaska for c. 900 km. The entire length of the fault is submerged along a continental margin dominated by Quaternary glacial processes, yet the geomorphology along the margin has never been systematically examined due to the absence of high-resolution seafloor mapping...

Sediment produced on fringing coral reefs that is transported along the bed or in suspension affects ecological reef communities as well as the morphological development of the reef, lagoon, and adjacent shoreline. This study quantified the physical process contribution and relative importance of sea‐swell waves, infragravity waves, and mean currents to the spatial and temporal...

On the open coast, flooding is largely driven by tides, storm surge, waves, and in areas near coastal inlets, the magnitude and co-occurrence of high fluvial discharges. Statistical methods are typically used to estimate the individual probability of coastal storm and fluvial discharge occurrences for use in sophisticated flood hazard models. A challenge arises when considering possible...

Sea level rise (SLR) is placing both immediate and long‐term pressures on coastal communities to take protective actions. Projects in the United States, and in many locations throughout the world, generally involve local jurisdictions raising the elevation of shoreline protection elements, with limited or no analysis of the feedback between shoreline management decisions and the impacts...

Sea levels are rising, with the highest rates in the tropics, where thousands of low-lying coral atoll islands are located. Most studies on the resilience of these islands to sea-level rise have projected that they will experience minimal inundation impacts until at least the end of the 21st century. However, these have not taken into account the additional hazard of wave-driven overwash...

Wave‐driven water level variability (and runup at the shoreline) is a significant cause of coastal flooding induced by storms. Wave runup is challenging to predict, particularly along tropical coral reef‐fringed coastlines due to the steep bathymetric profiles and large bottom roughness generated by reef organisms, which can violate assumptions in conventional models applied to open...

Different modes of tsunami edge waves can interact through nonlinear resonance. During this process, edge waves that have very small initial amplitude can grow to be as large or larger than the initially dominant edge wave modes. In this study, the effects of dynamical phase are established for a single triad of edge waves that participate in resonant interactions. In previous studies...

Twenty papers on the study of tsunamis are included in Volume III of the PAGEOPH topical issue “Global Tsunami Science: Past and Future”. Volume I of this topical issue was published as PAGEOPH, vol. 173, No. 12, 2016 and Volume II as PAGEOPH, vol. 174, No. 8, 2017. Two papers in Volume III focus on specific details of the 2009 Samoa and the 1923 northern Kamchatka tsunamis; they are...

Introduction In 2007, the California Ocean Protection Council initiated the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), designed to create a comprehensive seafloor map of high-resolution bathymetry, marine benthic habitats, and geology within the 3-nautical-mile limit of California’s State Waters. The CSMP approach is to create highly detailed seafloor maps through collection...

Introduction In 2007, the California Ocean Protection Council initiated the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), designed to create a comprehensive seafloor map of high-resolution bathymetry, marine benthic habitats, and geology within the 3-nautical-mile limit of California’s State Waters. The CSMP approach is to create highly detailed seafloor maps through collection...

Constraining coral reef metabolism and carbon chemistry dynamics are fundamental for understanding and predicting reef vulnerability to rising coastal CO2 concentrations and decreasing seawater pH. However, few studies exist along reefs occupying densely inhabited shorelines with known input from land-based sources of pollution. The shallow coral reefs off Kahekili, West Maui, are...