The Coast
1
1.1 Introduction
Before we start to dive into the complexity of integrated coastal zone management, because
the understanding or even the definition of these four words would take us on a long
journey, a short introduction of the term coast should be given. I don’t want to repeat most
of the words that have already been written either by poets or scientists, it’s only to get
a somewhat clearer picture of what is meant when we talk about the coast or the coastal
zone. Lengthy definitions exist for these terms and I’d like to present a selection of them
to, afterwards, come to a conclusion on how this understanding might resonate through
this book.
The chapter “Encircling the beginning – where (I)CZM started” falls back on two
starting points one in Australia and the other one in the USA, at San Francisco Bay. At
the end of the first steps according to Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) in
the USA there was the enactment of the Coastal Zone Management Act in 1972. Also in
1972 a workshop was conducted to identify critical problems in the coastal zone – see
Ketchum (1972). The participants don’t only concentrate on the collection and identification of problems and challenges they also provided a working definition for the term
coastal zone (Ketchum, 1972, p. 4– 5):
The coastal zone is the band of dry land and adjacent ocean space (water and submerged land)
in which land ecology and use directly affect ocean space ecology, and vice versa. The coastal
zone is a band of variable width which borders the continents, the inland seas, and the Great
Lakes. Functionally, it is the broad interface between land and water where production, consumption, and exchange processes occur at high rates of intensity. Ecologically, it is an area
of dynamic biogeochemical activity but with limited capacity for supporting various forms of
human use. Geographically, the landward boundary of the coastal zone is necessarily vague.
The oceans may affect climate far inland from the sea. Ocean salt penetrates estuaries to various
extents, depending largely upon geometry of the estuary and river flow, and the ocean tides may
c
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2018
1
F. Ahlhorn, Integrated Coastal Zone Management,
Wasser: Ökologie und Bewirtschaftung, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-17052-3_1
1
1.1 Introduction
Before we start to dive into the complexity of integrated coastal zone management, because
the understanding or even the definition of these four words would take us on a long
journey, a short introduction of the term coast should be given. I don’t want to repeat most
of the words that have already been written either by poets or scientists, it’s only to get
a somewhat clearer picture of what is meant when we talk about the coast or the coastal
zone. Lengthy definitions exist for these terms and I’d like to present a selection of them
to, afterwards, come to a conclusion on how this understanding might resonate through
this book.
The chapter “Encircling the beginning – where (I)CZM started” falls back on two
starting points one in Australia and the other one in the USA, at San Francisco Bay. At
the end of the first steps according to Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) in
the USA there was the enactment of the Coastal Zone Management Act in 1972. Also in
1972 a workshop was conducted to identify critical problems in the coastal zone – see
Ketchum (1972). The participants don’t only concentrate on the collection and identification of problems and challenges they also provided a working definition for the term
coastal zone (Ketchum, 1972, p. 4– 5):
The coastal zone is the band of dry land and adjacent ocean space (water and submerged land)
in which land ecology and use directly affect ocean space ecology, and vice versa. The coastal
zone is a band of variable width which borders the continents, the inland seas, and the Great
Lakes. Functionally, it is the broad interface between land and water where production, consumption, and exchange processes occur at high rates of intensity. Ecologically, it is an area
of dynamic biogeochemical activity but with limited capacity for supporting various forms of
human use. Geographically, the landward boundary of the coastal zone is necessarily vague.
The oceans may affect climate far inland from the sea. Ocean salt penetrates estuaries to various
extents, depending largely upon geometry of the estuary and river flow, and the ocean tides may
c
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2018
1
F. Ahlhorn, Integrated Coastal Zone Management,
Wasser: Ökologie und Bewirtschaftung, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-17052-3_1