Kiki Patsch

California State University, Channel Islands | CSUCI · Department of Environmental Science and Resource Management

Coastal hazards involve the interaction or effects of natural coastal processes on shoreline development, infrastructure, and human activities. Future sea-level rise will affect California’s coastal development and infrastructure through both flooding of low-lying areas and erosion of cliffs, bluffs, and dunes. The global rate of sea-level rise is...

As sea level continues to rise at an accelerated rate, California’s intensive coastal development and infrastructure is coming under an increasing threat. Whether lowelevation shoreline areas that are subject to flooding at extreme tides and times of storm wave run-up, or construction on eroding bluffs or cliffs, the risks will continue to increase...

Beaches form a significant component of the economy, history, and culture of southern California. Yet both the construction of dams and debris basins in coastal watersheds and the armoring of eroding coastal cliffs and bluffs have reduced sand supply. Ultimately, most of this beach sand is permanently lost to the submarine canyons that intercept li...

Global sea level is rising at an increasing rate and communities and cities around the planet are in the way. While we know the historic and recent rates of sea level rise, projections for the future are difficult due to political, economic, and social unknowns, as well as uncertainties in how the vast ice sheets and glaciers of Antarctica and Gree...

Patsch, K.; King, P.; Reineman, D.R.; Jenkins, S.; Steele, C.; Gaston, E., and Anderson, S., 0000. Beach sustainability assessment: The development and utility of an interdisciplinary approach to sandy beach monitoring. Journal of Coastal Research, 00(0), 000-000. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Sandy beaches are valued for various ecosyst...

Climate change and associated sea level rise (SLR) will have substantial impacts on coastlines worldwide, threatening beaches, infrastructure, economies, and communities. In California, communities and individuals rely on the state’s public coastal access to physically reach and use the beaches and nearshore waters. Such use constitutes a key compo...

In a display of the increasingly destructive impact of climate change and sea level rise, in January 2023 unusually severe storms hit California’s west coast and devastated the infrastructure at Monterey Bay’s Seacliff State Beach. Additional severe storms in December 2023 compounded the damage. This article frames the potential application of a ne...

Dauphin Island, Alabama is a particularly egregious example of moral hazard and maldevelopment and the policies and practices that allow this to take place. The west end of Dauphin Island offers a clear case study of such practices and illustrates the crucial role that State and local regulation play in curtailing many of the moral hazard effects o...

Lester, C.; Griggs, G.; Patsch, K., and Anderson, R., 0000. Shoreline retreat in California: Taking a step back. Journal of Coastal Research, 00(0), 000-000. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Adapting to long-term sea-level rise has emerged as perhaps the most significant coastal management challenge of the 21st century. But this challenge h...

California is a major shipping point for exports and imports across the Pacific Basin, has large commercial and recreational fisheries, and an abundance of marine recreational boaters. Each of these industries or activities requires either a port or harbor. California has 26 individual coastal ports and harbors, ranging from the huge sprawling cont...

Open Access Link: http://enculturation.net/erodingthefuture . Sand mining is the “global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of” (Beiser, “Sand Mining”) and a rarely invoked topic in discourses on climate change and environmental justice. Demand for sand—an integral component of construction and electronics manufacturing—has tripled o...

This article presents a case study of an interdisciplinary, collaborative project that spanned three courses in three disciplines and involved over ninety students. We explore the institutional and curricular frameworks that supported the project, from inception to execution, and the challenges and rewards of a student-driven, interdisciplinary col...

The intensively developed southern California coastline from Malibu to the Palos Verdes Peninsula can be divided into two littoral cells, which have both undergone significant but markedly different changes over the past century. The Zuma Cell, extending from Pt. Mugu to Pt. Dume, trends nearly east-west and has relatively little sand input. Contin...

Sensitivity experiments in the North Carolina Outer Banks (OBX) have previously revealed that substrate sand proportion, followed by substrate slope, sea-level rise rate and sediment-loss rate are the most important factors in determining how barrier islands respond to sea-level rise. High sediment-loss rates and low substrate sand proportions caus...

As dynamic and low-lying coastal landforms, barrier islands are especially vulnerable to sea level rise, changes in sediment supply and coastal storms. Changes in these factors may ultimately result in new conditions that are sufficiently different from present to cause a shift in equilibrium state from landward-migrating to submerging, i.e., a thr...

The coastline of California has been divided into a set of distinct, essentially self-contained littoral cells or beach compartments. These compartments are geographically limited and consist of a series of sand sources (such as streams and eroding coastal bluffs), that provide sand to the shoreline; sand sinks (such as coastal dunes and submarine...

The use of coastal sediment budgets has garnered wide acceptance since its inception nearly 40 years ago. Since then, many researchers have used sediment budgets to quantify littoral transport rates and understand coastal processes on diverse coastlines including the high-energy Pacific coast of North America, the Black Sea, the Nile Delta and beyo...

T his paper is based on a presenta-tion made in a symposium entitled "Bar-Built Freshwater Lagoons" convened at the American Fisheries Society's 137 th annual meeting held in San Francisco in September 2007. The symposium's goal was to promote ex-change of information between biologists and physical-process researchers for the improved management o...

Crowded into the beautiful, narrow strip at the edge of the ocean, the large number of people who live near California's dynamic coastline often have little awareness of the hazards-waves, tides, wind, storms, rain, and runoff-that erode and impact the coast and claim property on a regular basis. This up-to-date, authoritative, and easy-to-use book...

Sand moves along the coast of California under the influence of waves, feeding California's intensively used beaches. The consequences of interrupting the littoral drift, traveling along the coast are often adverse and affect the adjacent shoreline. A regional understanding of littoral cell boundaries and sand budjets is a useful tool in coastal la...

Seventy-two percent of California's 1760 km coastline consists either of high steep cliffs or lower bluffs eroded into nearly horizontal marine terraces. Four processes and factors interact to produce sea cliff retreat. Two of these are very large in scale and provide the overall regional framework for coastal evolution. The other two, the inherent...

Seacliff erosion contributes to the natural sediment supply that provides California's beaches with sand. When an armoring structure (i.e. rip-rap, seawall) is built in front of a seacliff to hinder erosion and thus protect cliff-top development, the natural supply of sand from seacliff erosion is cut off. Thus, it is important to inventory the ext...