Duke university program for the study of developed shorelines

Young is a frequent contributor to the popular media. Finally, Dr. Young has testified before congress and numerous state legislatures on coastal issues. He is President of Sialia Environmental, Inc— a firm that provides environmental consulting and restoration design. Geology, College of William and Mary, Young, R. The importance of carbon loss through wetland erosion in the Albemarle-Pamlico-Currituck Sound system, North Carolina. Southeastern Geology, Bush, D. After the Storms: Geologists look at coastal zone building.

Find more information about the seminar and Dr. Young below. We hope you can join! Despite our best efforts and the expenditure of billions of dollars annually, we are making little progress in coastal resilience. This is despite the fact that coastal engineering projects now dominate the sediment budget along many shorelines like that of New Jersey.

The rush to embrace green infrastructure will provide temporary shoreline stabilization in some coastal settings, but will ultimately leave us with neither protection nor the promised ecosystem services.

Our efforts towards coastal retreat and buyouts a truly long-term solution are restricted largely to low income communities and communities of color. Resort communities continue to receive massive public subsidies to remain in place while supporting the value of investment property.

Ultimately, the solution to resilience in much of the coastal zone is not continued public investment, but rather large-scale public disinvestment from much of the oceanfront. And, the only hope for the long-term preservation of coastal ecosystems is not to try to rebuild them in front of homes and roads, but to allow them to move landward as sea level rises. Maybe not everywhere, but in strategic settings.

The primary mission of PSDS is to conduct scientific research into coastal processes, storm impacts, hazard vulnerability and sea level rise and to translate that science into management and policy recommendations through a variety of professional and public outreach mechanisms.

The Program specializes in evaluating the design and implementation of coastal engineering and restoration projects and helping communities develop coastal adaptation strategies.

Duke Distinguished Doctoral Fellow. Reid Distinguished Service Award.