Talk on Shoreline Management

King tide swamps beach at Pacific City.\Photo by Steve Gehring.'

Thursday, July 29, is Oregon Shores’ actual anniversary date, and we’re sponsoring a number of special activities to mark the occasion, both in the field and online.  For more on the anniversary, see the event listing.

Of particular note to those concerned about the intersection of land use planning and climate change is the talk by Orrin Pilkey at 4 p.m.

Dr. Pilkey will speak on “The Future of Our Beaches.”  One of the world’s most renowned experts on beaches and how we manage them, he is a professor emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, and founder and director emeritus of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS), currently based at Western Carolina University.  His 2009 book The Rising Sea (written with Rob Young, his successor as PSDS director) sounded the alarm about the global loss of beaches.  His most recent books are Retreat from a Rising Sea (co-authored with daughter, Linda, and son, Keith), which discusses the need to move back from the coast as it retreats due to sea level rise; and Lessons from the Sand, which offers easy experiments for kids (and adults) to do while learning about beach processes. He co-wrote this book with his son, Charles Pilkey, an artist-sculptor, who illustrated it.

To register for this event and for the entire anniversary day, go here.