Assessment of the Coastal Vulnerability to the Ongoing Sea Level Rise for the Exquisite Rhodes Island (SE Aegean Sea, Greece)

Water

Ioannis P. Panagiotopoulos¹  Dimitra I. Malliouri¹  Stelios Petrakis¹  Fragkiska-Karmela Gad¹  Aikaterini Kikaki¹  Vasilios Kapsimalis¹  Dimitrios Vandarakis¹  Ioannis Morfis¹  Vassiliki Loukaidi¹  Paraskevi Drakopoulou¹  Maria Chatzinaki¹  Theodore D. Kanellopoulos¹  Georgios-Angelos Hatiris² 

[1] Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, 46.7 km Athens-Sounio Ave., 19013 Anavyssos, Greece;Hydrobiological Station of Rhodes, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Cos Street, 85131 Rhodes, Greece;

关键词: accelerated sea level rise;    coastal vulnerability index;    coastal tourism;    coastal vulnerability mitigation strategy;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w13162169

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The foreseeable acceleration of global sea level rise could potentially pose a major threat to the natural charm and functional integrity of the world-renowned tourist coastal attractions of Rhodes Island, as a result of the anticipated increasing frequency of flooding and erosion events. Hence, this study aims to determine the most vulnerable segments (in terms of physical impact) of the Rhodes coastline through the widely accepted coastal vulnerability index (CVI), applying a combination of well-known, broadly used approaches and methods. The frequency distribution of the current CVI along the island’s coastline suggests a rather worrying high to very high vulnerability of 40%. In addition, a CVI projection to the end of the 21st century (based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictive scenarios) indicates an enhancement of the total vulnerability by 48%, mainly focused on the majority of the western coastline. Hence, a considerable number of popular coastal destinations in the island shall remain under unignorable threat and, therefore, coastal managers and decision-makers need to hatch an integrated plan to minimize economic and natural losses, private property damage and tourism infrastructure deterioration from flooding and erosion episodes, which will most likely be intensified in the future.

【 授权许可】

Unknown