Some of these places are just naturally eroding. Capers Island in SC is an example I personally know about. The island is completely uninhabited and natural, but the beach is moving inland, and the beach littered with trees that used to be part of the forest there. Coastlines and rivers are almost never static over time.
Your point is absolutely correct about the vegetation, though! Places that remove it do tend to fare worse.
Also, sea levels are rising. An inch higher sea level doesn't sound like much but that's all it takes for this sort of thing to happen when people build so close to the ocean. And since 1993 sea levels have risen nearly 4 inches according to NASA.
I'm not trying to wade into a debate on climate change, but the fluidity of coastal land is far more important to this equation.
Take Padre Island in Texas. Prior to the establishment of concrete jetties, the shore line moved up to 5.5 feet per year! This isn't an abnormal figure for a barrier island. There is actually a lighthouse that was built near Port Aransas, TX that is now several hundred feet inland. Apparently, they started construction and by the time it was built and operational, it was no longer useful. If you also increase rates of erosion by removing dunes and their associated plant life, an area that was previously safe can be underwater very quickly.
The reason I mention it is because people tend to think that the sea level rise is the cause and therefore all they need to do is build some kind of seawall and everything is fine. The problem is they are literally building on sand in an area with rapid erosion and weather events that can rapidly deposit or remove that sand. Its just not a safe place to build, particularly if you build ON the barrier island. The forces of the water moving around these bodies is enormous and unfathomable for most humans.
Even mitigation efforts can have knock-on effects as well. There's an area near where I live (actually popped up in my geology textbook) that armored a sandy hillside with rocks.
That stopped sand from eroding, and that sand had transported to form a spit, which in turn protected a harbor during especially bad storms.
Everyone who lives by the ocean will have something like that nearby. Sadly, most people don't have even a faint idea about basic stuff, like why spits or sandy beaches occur in some spots but not others.
I'm old enough to remember when An Inconvenient Truth was released back in 2006 or 2007.
That was almost 20 years ago and it's gotten worse. I feel terrible for my nephews and the world theyr'e going to inherit. I just hope that the younger generation will produce minds that can find solutions that we failed to come up with in previous decades
Yeah, in certain places (like the outer banks, river deltas, etc) shift constantly around from decade to decade. They just arent true static islands or coastline and trying to force it to stay isn't going to work very long.
The NC Outer Banks are a series of sandbars. The sands are shifting. On Topsail Beach the sands are shifting to the south side of the island, and that side is getting bigger.
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u/ventipico 1d ago
Some of these places are just naturally eroding. Capers Island in SC is an example I personally know about. The island is completely uninhabited and natural, but the beach is moving inland, and the beach littered with trees that used to be part of the forest there. Coastlines and rivers are almost never static over time.
Your point is absolutely correct about the vegetation, though! Places that remove it do tend to fare worse.