Coastal Resiliency: Landscape at Land's End

Although the intersection of water and land is a dynamic and fluid space, people have not been discouraged by this unsettled relationship between the elements. Around the globe, cultures have sprung up along lakes, rivers, and ocean shorelines. With each settlement, the forces of nature have continued to sculpt the shoreline and impact humanity. With the investment of time, treasure and talent to transform a dynamic space into a cultural place, people have sought to protect their individual and societal investments especially in Western European cultures and specifically in the United States. The US government and sometimes coastal industries, often led by real estate developers or commercial business interests, have hard armored and engineered shorelines to protect property and businesses to the detriment of true environmental resiliency and ecosystem health. A living shoreline, a term credited to Dr. Edgar Garbisch, Jr. and used here as defined by NOAA, is a strengthened shoreline with the designed intervention of natural materials including terrestrial and aquatic plants, wood, shells and rocks to form an intricate matrix of nature-based materials all working together to improve resiliency and habitat. Living shoreline techniques have that incorporate a more holistic view of the coast with consideration of the environment and the human experience have been implemented and analyzed (Narayan, 2016). Along the Southern California coastline where the currents and surf are generally high energy throughout the year, how can a landscape architectural perspective contribute to mitigating sea level rise, storm induced erosion and flooding along the human and ocean interface?