Coral reefs act like submerged breakwaters by breaking waves and dissipating their energy offshore before they flood coastal properties and communities. This is an enormously valuable function: In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria alone caused over $265 billion in damage across the nation.
Role of Reefs in Coastal Protection
Active
By Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
June 27, 2022
We are combining ocean, engineering, ecologic, social, and economic modeling to provide a high-resolution, rigorous, spatially-explicit valuation of the coastal flood protection benefits provided by coral reefs and the cost effectiveness of reef restoration for enhancing those benefits.
The Problem
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Coastal flooding and erosion from extreme weather events affect thousands of vulnerable coastal communities. The impacts of coastal flooding are predicted to worsen during this century owing to population growth and climate change. There is an urgent need to develop better risk reduction and adaptation strategies to reduce coastal flooding and associated hazards. There is growing national recognition of the role of natural and nature-based solutions to address coastal risks. The biggest limitation to advancing the use of natural defenses in coastal management, however, is the lack of quantitative assessments of their engineering performance and economic benefits. Coral reefs, in particular, can substantially reduce coastal flooding and erosion by dissipating as much as 97 percent of incident wave energy. Reefs function like low-crested breakwaters, with hydrodynamic behavior well characterized by coastal engineering models. Indeed, the need for approaches that use state-of-the-art hydrodynamic and economic models to quantify risk reduction in monetary terms has been widely acknowledged and, thus far, unaddressed, particularly at regional scales. There are currently no comprehensive, high-resolution maps of the benefits or cost effectiveness of coral reef restoration for coastal flood risk reduction. Without this information, it is not possible for Federal, State, Territorial, and local governments and communities to include coral reef restoration in flood recovery and mitigation efforts.
Our Approach
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
We are combining hydrodynamic, coastal engineering, geospatial, social, and economic modeling to provide a high-resolution, rigorous, spatially explicit valuation of the coastal flood protection benefits provided by coral reefs at present across, and the cost effectiveness of reef restoration for enhancing those benefits. Our risk-based methods follow probabilistic risk assessment approaches used by the insurance industry and by FEMA and NOAA for the quantification of baseline risk and risk-reduction measures. We are assessing the benefits provided by reefs under present conditions and for different coral reef restoration scenarios. The restoration scenarios cover the range of risk reduction effects that restoration projects could provide, and therefore can pinpoint sites where restoration will be most beneficial and/or cost-effective. We are calculating spatially explicit values of the cost effectiveness of coral reef restoration and making them available in maps through a widely used, web-based, interactive, online decision-support tool.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
For more information, see:
“The Value of U.S. Coral Reefs for Risk Reduction” and
Read the featured news article in Frontiers, “Coral reef restorations can be optimized to reduce flood risk.”
Please also see the associated efforts on the Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST) Project website:
Learn more about our related studies.
Quantifying Flood Risk and Reef Risk Reduction Benefits in Florida and Puerto Rico: The Consequences of Hurricane Damage, Long-term Degradation, and Restoration Opportunities
Coastal flooding and erosion from extreme weather events affect thousands of vulnerable coastal communities; the impacts of coastal flooding are predicted to worsen during this century because of population growth and climate change. Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 were particularly devasting to humans and natural communities. The coral reefs off the State of Florida and the Commonwealth of...
The Value of U.S. Coral Reefs for Risk Reduction
Summary of the report, “Rigorously valuing the role of U.S. coral reefs in coastal hazard risk reduction”
Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST)
The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...
Coral Reef Seafloor Erosion and Coastal Hazards
Synchronized field work focused on geochemistry, geology, and metabolic processes overlaid on a habitat map of an entire reef to produce a synoptic overview of reef processes that contribute to carbonate precipitation and dissolution.
Below are multimedia items associated with this project.
Curt Storlazzi - Coral Reefs as National, Natural Infrastructure
Coral reefs act like submerged breakwaters by breaking waves and dissipating their energy offshore before they flood coastal properties and communities. This is an enormously valuable function: In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria alone caused over $265 billion in damage across the nation.
Reducing Flood Risks by Restoring Coral Reefs
We are combining ocean, engineering, ecologic, social, and economic modeling to provide a high-resolution, rigorous, spatially-explicit valuation of the coastal flood protection benefits provided by coral reefs and the cost effectiveness of reef restoration for enhancing those benefits.
The Problem
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Coastal flooding and erosion from extreme weather events affect thousands of vulnerable coastal communities. The impacts of coastal flooding are predicted to worsen during this century owing to population growth and climate change. There is an urgent need to develop better risk reduction and adaptation strategies to reduce coastal flooding and associated hazards. There is growing national recognition of the role of natural and nature-based solutions to address coastal risks. The biggest limitation to advancing the use of natural defenses in coastal management, however, is the lack of quantitative assessments of their engineering performance and economic benefits. Coral reefs, in particular, can substantially reduce coastal flooding and erosion by dissipating as much as 97 percent of incident wave energy. Reefs function like low-crested breakwaters, with hydrodynamic behavior well characterized by coastal engineering models. Indeed, the need for approaches that use state-of-the-art hydrodynamic and economic models to quantify risk reduction in monetary terms has been widely acknowledged and, thus far, unaddressed, particularly at regional scales. There are currently no comprehensive, high-resolution maps of the benefits or cost effectiveness of coral reef restoration for coastal flood risk reduction. Without this information, it is not possible for Federal, State, Territorial, and local governments and communities to include coral reef restoration in flood recovery and mitigation efforts.
Our Approach
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
We are combining hydrodynamic, coastal engineering, geospatial, social, and economic modeling to provide a high-resolution, rigorous, spatially explicit valuation of the coastal flood protection benefits provided by coral reefs at present across, and the cost effectiveness of reef restoration for enhancing those benefits. Our risk-based methods follow probabilistic risk assessment approaches used by the insurance industry and by FEMA and NOAA for the quantification of baseline risk and risk-reduction measures. We are assessing the benefits provided by reefs under present conditions and for different coral reef restoration scenarios. The restoration scenarios cover the range of risk reduction effects that restoration projects could provide, and therefore can pinpoint sites where restoration will be most beneficial and/or cost-effective. We are calculating spatially explicit values of the cost effectiveness of coral reef restoration and making them available in maps through a widely used, web-based, interactive, online decision-support tool.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
For more information, see:
“The Value of U.S. Coral Reefs for Risk Reduction” and
Read the featured news article in Frontiers, “Coral reef restorations can be optimized to reduce flood risk.”
Please also see the associated efforts on the Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST) Project website:
Learn more about our related studies.
Quantifying Flood Risk and Reef Risk Reduction Benefits in Florida and Puerto Rico: The Consequences of Hurricane Damage, Long-term Degradation, and Restoration Opportunities
Coastal flooding and erosion from extreme weather events affect thousands of vulnerable coastal communities; the impacts of coastal flooding are predicted to worsen during this century because of population growth and climate change. Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 were particularly devasting to humans and natural communities. The coral reefs off the State of Florida and the Commonwealth of...
The Value of U.S. Coral Reefs for Risk Reduction
Summary of the report, “Rigorously valuing the role of U.S. coral reefs in coastal hazard risk reduction”
Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST)
The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...
Coral Reef Seafloor Erosion and Coastal Hazards
Synchronized field work focused on geochemistry, geology, and metabolic processes overlaid on a habitat map of an entire reef to produce a synoptic overview of reef processes that contribute to carbonate precipitation and dissolution.
Below are multimedia items associated with this project.
Curt Storlazzi - Coral Reefs as National, Natural Infrastructure
Coral reefs act like submerged breakwaters by breaking waves and dissipating their energy offshore before they flood coastal properties and communities. This is an enormously valuable function: In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria alone caused over $265 billion in damage across the nation.
Coral reefs act like submerged breakwaters by breaking waves and dissipating their energy offshore before they flood coastal properties and communities. This is an enormously valuable function: In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria alone caused over $265 billion in damage across the nation.
Reducing Flood Risks by Restoring Coral Reefs