Wave driven cross shore and alongshore transport reveal more extreme projections of shoreline change in island environments

Coastal erosion, intensified by sea level rise, poses significant threats to coastal communities in Hawaiʻi and similar island communities. This study projects long-term shoreline change on the Hawaiian Island of O‘ahu using the data-assimilated CoSMoS-COAST shoreline change model. CoSMoS-COAST models four key shoreline processes: (1) Alongshore transport, (2) Recession due to sea level rise, (3) Cross-shore transport due to waves, and (4) Residual processes represented by a linear trend term. This study marks the first application of CoSMoS-COAST for an oceanic equatorial island with narrow beaches and a dynamic wave climate. The model is informed with a novel combination of shoreline data derived from high-resolution imagery from Planet, Sentinel-2, and Landsat satellites, wave-climate hindcasts specific to Hawai‘i, and regional beach-slope surveys. On a dynamic northern Oʻahu beach, the model achieved a root mean square error of 9.4 m between observations and model output. CoSMoS-COAST predicts that 81% of O‘ahu’s sandy beach coastline could experience beach loss by 2100; with 39.8% of this loss happening by 2030. This represents an increase, 43.3%, in net landward shoreline change compared to previous erosion forecasts, for 0.3 m of sea level rise (2050). Additionally, dynamic processes such as cross-shore equilibrium processes and alongshore sediment transport, play a large contribution to gross shoreline change within the next decade, particularly on O ‘ahu’s north and west shores. In the long term, we find that recession due to sea level rise and residual processes dominate, but dynamic, wave-driven processes (longshore and cross-shore transport) still account for 34% of shoreline change between present and 2100. We assert dynamic, wave-driven processes are a crucial addition for accurate modeling of island sandy beach environments. These findings have implications for O‘ahu’s coastal planning and development, suggesting updates to shoreline policies that rely upon erosion forecasting, and highlights the importance of incorporating wave and alongshore transport in erosion models for other Pacific islands.