As coastal resource managers, we have sought to improve hazard mitigation where we could — in boardrooms and state houses, on street corners, and in town meetings. We can't prevent coastal hazards, but we can understand and anticipate them with better preparation and planning.
With that in mind, this issue of Coastal Services profiles how two California agencies dealt with El Niño. Of all the coastal states, California certainly has faced its fair share of disasters. This experience helped coastal resource managers there prepare for and weather the long-winded El Niño. Preparation, however, does not equal protection. The storms resulted in several deaths, hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and severe erosion. Coastal officials will spend a lot of time over the next year uncovering the permitting quagmires this storm surely created.
To determine just how much coastal real estate El Niño washed out to sea, the NOAA Coastal Services Center is testing its new laser beach mapping project over the California coast. For this project, the Center teamed up with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey to use aircraft-mounted lasers to document shoreline change. This new beach surveying method is proving to be faster and less costly than traditional beach surveying methods.
On the other side of the country, this newsletter looks at two projects that serve to improve our ability to prepare for and recover from hurricanes. In coastal Alabama, state and local officials have worked with NOAA Coastal Services Center hazards specialists to create a CD-ROM that may prove to be an important tool for disaster preparation. Similar projects are already under way in other states.
In South Carolina, a researcher with the state Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management is perfecting a system of using geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) satellites to improve post-storm assessment and recovery. That researcher is also a NOAA Coastal Services Center fellow.
These projects promise to be applicable along any coast. We hope the information provided here steers your community down the path to better preparation and recovery — because somewhere out there, a storm is brewing.
-- Margaret A. Davidson
