vii
Preface
Academic geologists spend their careers educating future generations of geologists.
We are also quite good at communicating with other geologists about our scientific
research. We do it through the publication of research papers in peer-reviewed journals and through presentations at conferences attended by other geologists.
Unfortunately, we are not quite so good at communicating our results and their
implications to politicians, policy makers, and the public. In this book we try to correct this situation to some small degree for the very relevant subject of coastal geology. Several of our chapters concentrate on coastal North Carolina, USA (it is the
natural laboratory where many of the authors have worked), but the information we
convey is relevant to many other coastal systems worldwide. Thus, we include several chapters that deal with coastal systems (the coastal plain to the inner shelf)
beyond the boundaries of North Carolina, in Malaysia, the Basque Country, the
Western Pacific, Gabon, Wales, the Caribbean, Tanzania, Russia, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, the Maldives, Alaska, Hawai’i, Louisiana, Florida, Oregon,
and Georgia. Several authors also mention older coastal systems, up to 450 million
years old. New approaches to collecting coastal geologic and oceanographic data
are also treated in a couple of chapters and we recognize the importance of education of students in coastal matters in another chapter. Most importantly, we try to
present the human side of geologists’ work. How we conduct research, how scientific knowledge evolves as new data become available, and how we, unfortunately,
sometimes take missteps along the way are all included. Our hope is that readers
will come away with a better understanding of coastal systems, field and laboratorybased geologic research, and the people who conduct it. Because approximately 25
million of the world’s population (~7.8 billion people) currently live on land less
than 1 m above high tide level (Kulp and Strauss, 2019), and that proportion has
been growing, an enhanced understanding of coastal evolution, coastal processes,
and anticipated future coastal change, together with a greater understanding of geologists’ research efforts (and our foibles), is relevant to us all.
I wrote much of the paragraph above in June 2018. In October 2018, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) distributed a special report
entitled “Global Warming of 1.5 °C.” This report, based on extensive scientific data,
Preface
Academic geologists spend their careers educating future generations of geologists.
We are also quite good at communicating with other geologists about our scientific
research. We do it through the publication of research papers in peer-reviewed journals and through presentations at conferences attended by other geologists.
Unfortunately, we are not quite so good at communicating our results and their
implications to politicians, policy makers, and the public. In this book we try to correct this situation to some small degree for the very relevant subject of coastal geology. Several of our chapters concentrate on coastal North Carolina, USA (it is the
natural laboratory where many of the authors have worked), but the information we
convey is relevant to many other coastal systems worldwide. Thus, we include several chapters that deal with coastal systems (the coastal plain to the inner shelf)
beyond the boundaries of North Carolina, in Malaysia, the Basque Country, the
Western Pacific, Gabon, Wales, the Caribbean, Tanzania, Russia, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, the Maldives, Alaska, Hawai’i, Louisiana, Florida, Oregon,
and Georgia. Several authors also mention older coastal systems, up to 450 million
years old. New approaches to collecting coastal geologic and oceanographic data
are also treated in a couple of chapters and we recognize the importance of education of students in coastal matters in another chapter. Most importantly, we try to
present the human side of geologists’ work. How we conduct research, how scientific knowledge evolves as new data become available, and how we, unfortunately,
sometimes take missteps along the way are all included. Our hope is that readers
will come away with a better understanding of coastal systems, field and laboratorybased geologic research, and the people who conduct it. Because approximately 25
million of the world’s population (~7.8 billion people) currently live on land less
than 1 m above high tide level (Kulp and Strauss, 2019), and that proportion has
been growing, an enhanced understanding of coastal evolution, coastal processes,
and anticipated future coastal change, together with a greater understanding of geologists’ research efforts (and our foibles), is relevant to us all.
I wrote much of the paragraph above in June 2018. In October 2018, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) distributed a special report
entitled “Global Warming of 1.5 °C.” This report, based on extensive scientific data,