Coast Today, Toast Tomorrow
Slumping shorelines, roving rivers, and exploding islands — five coastlines that I’m sure were here yesterday.
Volcanic eruptions have repeatedly built and destroyed the island of Krakatau. Photo by buitenzorger, Creative Commons licensed.
Swept away
On Dec. 26, 2004, in Aceh province, Sumatra, tourists and locals enjoying the beach were fascinated when the water suddenly receded, revealing parts of the sea floor that they had never seen. But this was the first sign of the oncoming tsunami, caused by a magnitude 9.15 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. The water roared back to shore, killing more than 200,000 and leaving devastation and an unrecognizable shoreline in its wake.
In Aceh, huge swaths of the coastline dropped dramatically, allowing seawater to surge inland where it filled waterways and destroyed bridges. The coasts of nearby islands rose as much as two metres. Today, the coast may look dramatically different, but locals in Aceh are well into their recovery process and are living much as they did before the disaster. In the decade since the tsunami, survivors have rebuilt, and tourists are returning.
Wearing Down
Since 1996, citizens of the coastal hamlet of Newtok, Alaska, have worked toward a difficult decision: most of the approximately 350 townspeople voted to abandon their homes and relocate to a new settlement about 14 kilometers to the south. The reason, in short, is global warming. The sea ice that used to protect the Alaskan coast from violent waves is melting rapidly. As a result, the town is losing meters of shoreline each year as erosion and rising water levels eat away the coast.
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