Coastal Access

Beach Sustainability Assessment: The development and utility of an interdisciplinary approach to sandy beach monitoring.

• Patsch K, King P, Reineman DR, Jenkins S, Steele C, Gaston E, Anderson S. Journal of Coastal Research 37(6): 1130-1157. (view article)

• Abstract. Sandy beaches are valued for various ecosystem services but are increasingly imperiled by anthropogenic stressors. Sea-level rise (SLR), reductions to sand supply, hardening the position of the coastline, and the prevalence of human development along California's coast combine to reduce the fundamental dynamism critical to the resilience of California's beaches. If California continues with business as usual, many of its beaches will erode and eventually disappear. Coastal jurisdictions in California are planning for SLR. However, these coastal managers lack a standardized regional assessment tool that compiles information on the current and likely future condition of sandy beaches. Without such a tool, these managers have limited ability to analyze the integrated impacts of historic decisions or future alternative management scenarios upon beach morphology, ecological functioning, economics, and social utility. This paper presents a study of the Beach Sustainability Assessment (BSA) decision support tool applied to 17 beaches spanning Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties. In addition to scoring and grading geomorphological, ecological functioning, and social utility components, the BSA provides a single, overall grade for each beach. To demonstrate the utility of the BSA, a scenario with 1 m of SLR and a 100-year storm was simulated to assess the changes to the overall grade and component grades. The BSA offers a cost-effective, standardized protocol to monitor the condition of California's sandy beach ecosystems. The metrics support spatial and temporal comparisons on a regional scale, giving coastal managers and stakeholders the ability to assess real trade-offs among management solutions. Current BSA indices indicate that beaches in the Southern California Bight study area are already struggling, with most urban beaches receiving Cs and Ds for ecological functioning. The SLR stressor test indicates that ecological functioning and social utility will continue to decline with increasing sea levels.

Coastal access equity and the implementation of the California Coastal Act.

• Reineman DR, Wedding LM, Hartge E, McEnery W, & Reiblich J. 2016. Stanford Environmental Law Journal 36: 89-108. (view article)

• Abstract. The California Coastal Act, passed in 1976, protects public coastal access for all Californians. In the forty years since the Act's passage, the state's population has nearly doubled with much of that growth occurring in the coastal zone, where the beaches and public trust shoreline are an important natural, open space resource. As such, they are beneficial to individual and community well-being. Inequities in access to nature (and other beneficial resources) are increasingly common. In this study, we evaluate and map the proximity of different demographic groups to public shoreline access points on California's coast. In so doing, we identify disparities in the availability of coastal access opportunities to different groups and show that, in general, wealthy, white, senior residents of California live closer to coastal access than other groups, while populous minority groups are significantly underrepresented in terms of their proximity to coastal access points. We discuss these findings in light of environmental change (e.g., sea level rise) and responses to such changes (e.g., shoreline armoring), combined with social factors (e.g., continued population growth) and policy responses to such changes (e.g., climate adaptation planning). Our analyses set the stage for further place-based study of disparities in public coastal access, including their impacts on specific populations, as well as mechanisms intrinsic to the Coastal Act for increasing coastal access equity in California through the Act's next forty years.

BSA-CAMP

• With collaborators Kiki Patsch (CSUCI's Environmental Science & Resource Management Program), Charles Lester (UCSB's Ocean & Coastal Policy Center), Phil King (SFSU Department of Economics, emeritus), and Jose Castro-Sotomayor (CSUCI's Department of Communications), we are currently building on my initial work, combined with that of my collaborators, results to provide more management relevant insights as well as to include impacts from sea level rise. This project is funded by a nearly $500,000 grant from the CSU Council and Ocean Affairs, Science, and Technology and the University of California Sea Grant Program.

• Our multiyear project, funded as the “Sustaining Beaches and Social Equity under Higher Sea Levels: An interdisciplinary case study of the Santa Barbara Littoral Cell,” began May 2021. Officially, we call it the Beach Sustainability Assessment - Comprehensive Analysis for Management Project (Visit the project website to learn more).

Quantifying the accessibility of California’s coastline.

• Adkins, Z., K.B. Patsch, and D.R. Reineman. 2019. Poster Presentation, 11th Annual SAGE Student Research Conference, CSU Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA. (view poster)

• Zach Adkins, one of my former students, conducted this project and presented these results as part of his capstone research at CSUCI.

In another cool study, colleague Wiley Jennings tested the ability of beach-going volunteers to provide reliable data about beach water quality:

Participatory science for coastal water quality: freshwater plume mapping and volunteer retention in a randomized controlled experiment.

• Jennings W, Cunniff S, Lewis K, Deres H, Reineman DR, Davis J, & Boehm A. 2020. Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts 22:918-929. (view article)

• Abstract. Among the biggest threats to coastal water quality are freshwater discharges. It is difficult to predict the spatial extent of freshwater plumes at marine beaches because processes governing mass transport in the surf zone are complex. Participatory science approaches could facilitate collecting shoreline data, although volunteer sampling campaigns can be challenged by data quality and volunteer retention. The goals of this study were to (1) work with volunteers to estimate safe swimming distances at beaches that receive polluted discharges, and (2) test whether informational feedback to volunteers increased retention. Forty-six volunteers participated over 12 weeks in 2019 by collecting 1452 salinity measurements at beaches near the mouths of two Central California freshwater discharges and completing participation surveys. These measurements resulted in 145 distinct estimates of safe swimming distances (D90), spanning a range of environmental conditions during rainy and dry periods. Median D90s were 150 and 100 m at San Pedro Creek south and north, and 490 and 330 m at San Lorenzo River west and east, respectively. D90 was significantly associated with adjacent freshwater discharge rate at both discharges and tide level at one discharge. On average, the odds of volunteers conducting sampling decreased by 4% (95% CI: 1%, 7%) with each successive week. A randomized intervention providing repeated data feedback via email to volunteers did not affect their retention in the study.