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- Info
Coastal sprawl: the effects of urban design on aquatic ecosystems in the United States
| Author: |
Beach, D. |
| Date: |
2002 |
| Periodical: |
Pew Oceans Commission |
| Link: |
http://pewoceans.org/
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| Abstract: |
According to popular wisdom, rapid population growth is the biggest threat to the costal environment. It's a classic case of trying to put ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack. Or is it? At first glance, national statistics appear to confirm that perspective. Coastal counties cover 17 percent of the land area of the United States. Coastal watersheds, as described by the Department of Agriculture, represent just 13 percent of the nation's acreage. By any measure, the coastal zone is a small part of the country, but it is home to more than half of America's citizens. Moreover, today's coastal populations are just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next 15 years, 27 million additional people more than half of the nation's population increase will funnel into this narrow corridor along the edge of the ocean.
Coastal population growth is not the whole story, however. It is actually a short chapter in a much larger book. Runaway land consumption, dysfunctional suburban development patterns, and exponential growth in automobile use are the real engines of pollution and habitat degradation on the coast. Some large coastal metropolitan areas are consuming land ten times as fast as they are adding new residents. Across the country, driving has increased at three to four times the increase in population. If today's land consumption trends continue, more than one-quarter of the coast's acreage will be developed by 2025 up from14 percent in 1997.
These trends are a prescription for severe ecological damage. Abundant research on rivers and estuaries confirms that when impervious surfaces cover more that ten percent of a watershed, the rivers, creeks, and estuaries they surround become biologically degraded. If today’s growth trends continue, many healthy watersheds will cross that threshold over the next 25 years and the U.S. will experience sharp and irreversible declines in the health of coastal waters. If we are to protect coastal ecosystems, reconfiguring and containing growth in the nation’s metropolitan regions is not just an option. It is an overriding necessity.
Efforts around the nation to reform development patterns, embodied in such movements as Smart Growth and the New Urbanism, offer solutions to the coastal management challenge. However, the linkage between land-use changes and coastal ecosystem performance is not well understood, nor is it adequately integrated into these broader movements. A large-scale public education campaign targeting local officials, state and federal regulatory agencies and representatives, and the public is a necessary ingredient for success.
Many opportunities exist for implementing change. At the local level, citizen activists are promoting better growth patterns through improved zoning and public investment policies. States such as Maryland, Florida, and Oregon, continue to refine statewide planning processes in order to achieve growth that is more efficient. Reauthorization of federal transportation, coastal zone management, and water quality legislation is forthcoming. All of these arenas offer the prospect for coordinated policy revisions that protect coastal ecosystems. The potential for positive change is enormous, and the momentum is building. Now is the time to add the cause of coastal ecology, and the voices of coastal protection advocates, to the call for land-use reform.
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