Recommendations for Coastal Land Use

• Create new laws to better protect the citizens’ home.
• Plant vegetation to dissipate the waves once on shore.
• Begin major projects to stop the pollution that destroys the natural surroundings.
• Consider creating unnatural reefs to replace those lost.
• In the future create areas in the most risk free suitable environments.

New Laws-

In both the areas of Peru and Micronesia new laws need to be passed to change their building codes to prevent new building from taking place in areas that are at the greater risk of being devastated by a tsunami.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s has projected that the sea level will rise .09 to 0.88 meters in the next 100 years.  This will cause more eroding of the shores, thus bringing any tsunami waves closer to existing communities.  By Bruun’s rule “a sandy shoreline retreats 100 meters for every meter the sea level rises”(Stewart).

We must take into account these factors when we decide how far from the shore coastal communities can be built.   Therefore, our recommendation is that buildings should be set on a foundation that is at least as tall as the highest sea level recorded in that area in addition to the 0.88 expected sea rise (Stewart) and set back at least 500 meters from the area in which vegetation grows undisturbed by the tides of the ocean.

Peru-

 In an area such as the coast of Peru the placement of the building structures is crucial because there is not enough vegetation to protect homes too close to the coast.  The areas of the coast of Peru span from areas of dessert to areas of tropics as you travel from South to North.  Therefore it is more intelligent to build in the more tropical areas where there are some forms of vegetation in the North then in the dessert like areas of the coast in the South.  We also suggest building in the river valleys that are formed as a result of the several rivers that flow down from the top of the Andes Mountains out into the Pacific Ocean (Potts).  In these areas the soil is rich enough to support cane sugar and cotton and therefore may support forests that can break the tsunami waves.

   This city is located too close to the waterfront to be safe.

Micronesia-

In Micronesia on the other hand many types of vegetation can be planted along the coast line or already reside along the coast line that can break the tsunami waves in the event that a tsunami occurs.  The most highly recommended of these are the mangrove forests that grow on the coastal areas of many of the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.  The biggest problem is that due to pollution and deforesting the mangrove population has decreased substantially (Braatz). 

New laws need to be enforced to stop the pollution and the deforesting of these areas.  These areas should also put into action a plan to reforest areas that are unprotected along the coast.  Statistics show that in areas, such as the Maldives, less casualties were suffered then in areas of Thailand where deforestation for resorts had occurred because the mangrove population broke the waves even though both these areas had a similar number of residents (Stewart).

Page by: Cathy Mancuso