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COASTAL MORPHOLOGY

Islands on the move

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 602–603 (2022)Cite this article

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Sea level rise causes barrier islands to migrate landward. Coastal evolution modelling reveals a centennial-scale lag in island response time and suggests migration rates will increase by 50% within the next century, even if sea level were to stabilize.

Barrier islands are narrow, sandy strips of land backed by shallow coastal bays, which often hold considerable economic and societal importance. Being only a few metres above sea level, they are dynamic, changing with the wind, waves and tides. As sea level rises, storm waves reach higher on the landscape causing many barrier islands to migrate landward over time. How barrier islands respond to a change in the rate of sea level rise has been long-debated. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Mariotti and Hein1 report on results from a new version of Mariotti’s powerful, spatially explicit coastal evolution model, CoastMorpho2D2, revealing that modern rates of barrier island retreat are controlled by the speed of sea level rise during past centuries, rather than by the current rate. This lag in island response means that barrier islands will retreat much faster in the future, even if sea level rise were to cease.

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Fig. 1: A view southward along rapidly migrating Wreck Island in Virginia, USA.

© Gordon Campbell / AtAltitudeGallery.com

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Laura J. Moore

  2. Duke University, Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Durham, NC, USA

    A. Brad Murray

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  1. Laura J. Moore
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  2. A. Brad Murray
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Correspondence to Laura J. Moore or A. Brad Murray.

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Moore, L.J., Murray, A.B. Islands on the move. Nat. Geosci. 15, 602–603 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01000-6

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