Robert E. Kopp, Rutgers University (website)
Global sea-level change, past and future: Robert Kopp is Associate Director of Rutgers Energy Institute and an associate professor in the Rutgers Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. His research focuses on understanding uncertainty in past and future climate change, with major emphases on sea-level change and on the interactions between physical climate change and the economy. A climate scientist and energy policy expert, he is a lead author of Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus, which formed the scientific basis for the the Risky Business project, and a contributing author to both Working Group 1 (Physical Science) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report. He has authored over fifty scientific papers and several popular articles in venues such as the New York Times.
Daria L. Nikitina, West Chester University (webpage)
Sea-level change in the Delaware Estuary: long-term (~5000 year) and short-term (hurricane) records: Sea-level reconstructions are important for understanding the driving mechanisms of past relative sea-level trends and for constraining predictions of future sea-level change. Recent study has shown that the average rate of relative sea-level rise in the Delaware Bay for the past ~2200 years was 1.12 ± 0.22 mm/yr and mainly controlled by land subsidence related to glacio-isostatic adjustment, driven by collapse of proglacial forebulge. Rising sea level created accommodation space for accumulation of thick wedge of salt marsh sediments. Increase in hurricane activity is closely related to warming of the ocean surface and therefore the risk of hurricane strikes may increase in the future. A clear understanding of the role of recent warming on tropical cyclone activity is limited by the shortness of the instrumental record. However, the sediment preserved beneath coastal wetlands provide a record of hurricane impacts and can be used for understanding the resilience of coastal system to climate change.
Daria Nikitina is an associate professor in the Department of Geology and Astronomy at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her research is focused on impact of severed storms and sea level on salt marshes. Using salt marsh sedimentary archives and sea-level proxies she reconstructed 2000-year sea level record for Delaware Bay. Daria received her PhD in Geology from University of Delaware and Master’s degree in physical geography from Lomonosov’s Moscow State University, Russia.
Elizabeth Burke Watson, Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University (webpage)
Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Coastal Wetlands in the U.S. Northeast: Worldwide, coastal wetlands are recognized as a transition zone that is critical for buffering the coast from the effects of climate change, and they are also one of the habitats most vulnerable to the effects of accelerated sea level rise. Recent research has shown that coastal wetlands in the U.S. Northeast are disappearing at an alarming rate. These wetlands largely are not being lost to coastal development, but to fragmentation and drowning, like wetlands in the Mississippi Delta region. This presentation will discuss processes and rates of coastal marsh drowning in the Northeast, review evidence that accelerated sea level rise is chiefly to blame, and describe the new paradigm emerging in coastal wetland conservation in response to sea level rise.
Elizabeth Burke Watson, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and the wetland section leader at the Patrick Center for Environmental Research at the Academy of Natural Sciences. She received her PhD in physical geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and prior to coming to Drexel University, worked as a research ecologist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
James T. Kirby, University of Delaware (webpage)
Modeling tsunami impacts on the Atlantic coast of the United States: Recent tsunami events in the Pacific basin have reminded us of the importance of tsunamis as a component of coastal hazard assessment. The Pacific events have primarily been results of stress release in tectonic subduction zones. This class of event, and the close relationship between fault geometry, seismic signal and resulting tsunami wave properties, is becoming increasingly well understood, allowing for relatively accurate initial predictions of resulting wave activity. In contrast, the US east and gulf coasts are presently thought to be more at risk from landslide events occurring on the margin between continental shelf and deep ocean. These events are not as well understood in many respects, including basic mechanics, return period or probability of occurrence, and correlation to measurable triggers. This talk describes ongoing research aimed at improving models of landslide tsunami events, and describes the use of these models in the development of inundation maps for the US east coast, for use by the emergency management community.
James T, Kirby is the Edward C. Davis Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he also received his PhD. He has also held teaching positions at the University of Florida and SUNY Stony Brook. Dr. Kirby’s present research interests include modeling of tsunami generation, propagation and inundation, modeling and field study of circulation and storm surge in tidal wetlands, studies of the mechanics of surface wave breaking and wave-current interaction in the coastal ocean, and modeling of the underwater acoustic response to ground motion during tsunami generation. He presently serves on the coordinating committee for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program.
Brian F. Atwater, U.S. Geological Survey (webpage)
Early accounts of coastal warping during subduction earthquakes: Pioneering observations anticipate today’s use of coastal geology as a guide to subduction hazards. Maria Graham (1785–1842) awoke to find that a Chilean shore had been uplifted during an overnight earthquake in 1822. She reported her findings a decade before Robert Fitzroy and Charles Darwin observed similar effects. Her account prevailed over she called “an uncourteous attack” by a scientific adversary of Charles Lyell’s. James Graham Cooper (1830–1900), a naturalist subsisting as a physician, encountered intertidal remains of dead coastal trees in Washington Territory of 1854. Cooper inferred that the trees had drowned in a Lyellian way, gradually—in contrast to today’s view that the tree death indicates subsidence during a catastrophic earthquake. Coseismic subsidence, noticed in southwest Japan in 1854, was mapped regionally in Alaska in 1964, at a time when eugeosynclines were still in vogue. Underthrusting of Alaska’s continental margin competed with a prominent seismologist’s inference of slip on a vertical fault. In a plate-tectonic framework, analogy with the Alaskan subsidence of 1964 helped coastal geologists show that great thrust earthquakes happen along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
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