Coastal management

Definition of coastal management: Coastal management or coastal defence is used throughout the world for many different purposes. It is a general term that refers to any activity taking place in the coastal zone, which has a specific purpose. It includes management for nature conservation (including grazing management), management of recreational activity, habitat and species restoration, coastal defence (protection from coastal erosion and flooding) amongst a wide range of other human uses. Integrated coastal management is sometimes used as an alternative to integrated coastal zone management, both stressing the interelated nature of coastal ecosystems with each other and the coss-cutting implications of human actions. There are many techniques of coastal management including "hard" and "soft" construction and planning approaches. Hard construction is the more traditional response to erosion and involves the construction of structures which stop wave energy reaching the shore, or absorb and reflect the energy. These have often caused problems themselves, such as increasing erosion elsewhere, and soft construction techniques have become more popular because of this. These techniques involve promoting natural systems such as beaches and salt marshes which protect the coast, and are usually cheaper to construct and maintain than hard construction techniques, and may be self-sustaining. This is the common definition for coastal management, other definitions can be discussed in the article

Furthur reading

In the Wikipedia "Coastal management" is defined as being mainly conncerned with coastal defence. These include "hard" and "soft" construction and planning approaches. Hard construction is the more traditional response to erosion and involves the construction of structures which stop wave energy reaching the shore, or absorb and reflect the energy. These have often caused problems themselves, such as increasing erosion elsewhere, and soft construction techniques have become more popular because of this. These techniques involve promoting natural systems such as beaches and salt marshes which protect the coast, and are usually cheaper to construct and maintain than hard construction techniques, and may be self-sustaining. However, as indicated above this is too narrow a definition of coastal management.