The loss of sand makes the beach narrower and lowers its elevation.. But the driving factor there is the beach — a place like Miami Beach wouldn’t have the same draw if ………... Well, coas
Trang 1U6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3ZYaL0Q9os
Imagine you're on a beach It's flat, it's wide With pristine sand Looks nice, right? Unfortunately, many beaches don't look this way They’re narrow, with steep cliffs, and waves breaking close to the property line This is a beach that’s experiencing erosion.(1)………
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……… But this effort, while effective in the short term, can actually hurt beaches in the long run It's because every shoreline on the planet is subject to erosion Beach erosion occurs when waves and currents remove sand from the shoreline The loss of sand makes the beach narrower and lowers its elevation This erosion becomes a problem when it reaches structures built by humans along the coast Especially for beaches that generate tourism The visitors enjoy the sandy coasts while the cities and towns nearby enjoy the revenue gained But the driving factor there is the beach — a place like Miami Beach wouldn’t have the same draw if
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……… But by the '80s, the beach in Miami re-emerged nice and wide How? Well, coastal engineers rebuilt it through a process called "beach nourishment." Beach nourishment is a shore protection strategy to try to counter the loss, the natural loss of sand The typical way to do this is with dredging Boats will dig up sand from a borrow site and move it onto the beach You'll have a big pipe pump and you'll suck up the sand Then it's transferred to the coastline Where it's dumped or pumped out onto the beach and then bulldozers move it around to try to mimic what the natural beach was like before the project took place The result is a
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………But there’s a problem The protection doesn’t last As the constant beating of waves and wind takes the sand away from the shore And it soon it looks like it did before the nourishment occurred Every 2 to 8 years, on average, the nourishments need to be repeated Like this beach in Florida Well this morning, Lido Beach is under a local state of emergency —Just look at how powerful the wind was earlier today —— problem getting worse by the hour Lido Beach, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, got an emergency nourishment in 2018 after damage from storms reduced the beach to a
Trang 2narrow strip But the beach had already gotten new sand 15 times since 1964 And Lido Key isn’t an outlier More than 200 of the 400 miles of critically eroding coastlines in Florida have received one or more nourishments (4)………
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………The funding for these projects gets a little wonky, but here's what's important: The federal government pays for a lot of these nourishments
Up to 65% of the cost State and local funds will make up the rest But not all beaches that want or need nourishment will get it The Army Corps of Engineers — the group that approves and designs nourishments —prioritizes defending some beaches over others, based on the potential loss of value
According to ProPublica, the Corps only funds nourishments where the expected benefit is 2 and a half times as high as the cost Poorer communities won’t often meet that criteria So places like Miami Beach, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland, are more likely to get a lot of nourishment They have the expensive shorefront developments that make the investment worthwhile And for beaches that don’t make the cut for nourishment, continued erosion can lead to damaged or destroyed property Nourishments aren't just about protecting buildings, but also protecting the
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………On average, the State of Florida generates more than 5 dollars
of revenue for every dollar invested in beach nourishment Which is why nourishment
is so appealing It make economic sense But they do present one major problem According to research published by the American Geophysical Union, there is a feedback loop Nourishment tends to happen along beaches that generally have expansive properties and they also seem to drive development along the same shores, despite the risk of future erosion If you were in a place that had nourished its beach, the houses behind that nourishment project were significantly larger, in every case, than in a place that had never nourished its shoreline at all Research found that areas with nourished beaches had homes that were about three times bigger than non-nourished ones And this excessive development is a real problem,
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………In fact, building
Trang 3more property in these areas only increases the potential damage from future erosion So, while beach nourishments protect property and local economies in the short run, they also trick us into thinking it’s safe to build in places that aren't
Which sets up coastal communities for an ugly reckoning at the shore sooner or later
1 pristine sand / /ˈprɪstin Ban sơ, tinh khôi, không bị hư hỏng, còn mới nguyên; tươi, sạch sẽ như mới
2 erosion /i´rouʒən/ Sự xói mòn, sự ăn mòn
3 coastlines /'koustlain/ Bờ biển; hình dáng bờ biển
4 shoreline /´ʃɔ:¸lain/ bờ biển
5 elevation /ˌɛləˈveɪʃən/ Sự nâng lên, sự đưa lên, sự giương lên; sự ngẩng lên; sự ngước lên
6 seawall đê biển
7 re-emerged Lại nổi lên, lại xuất hiện
8 beach nourishment /´nʌriʃmənt/ Sự nuôi, sự nuôi dưỡng
9 prioritizes /praɪˈɒrɪtaɪz/
10 revenue ˈrɛvəˌnu/ hải quan
11 coastal /´koustl/ bờ biển; (thuộc) miền ven biển, (thuộc) miền duyên hải
12 hazards /ˈhæzərd/ Mối nguy
1 In America, about 80 to 90 percent of sandy coastlines have this problem So the government spends billions to expand some of the most rapidly eroding beaches in an effort to defend the coast
2 In fact there was a time when it didn’t look this way at all In the 1970s, a seawall turned the beach in Miami into a narrow strip
3 The new profile will better defend the property line from damage during more intense weather like storm surge flooding In the United States, beach nourishment is the main strategy used to protect coastal properties from risky erosion
4 And across the United States, there have been nearly 3000 known-nourishment events since 1923
5 Consider the 200 million dollars spent on nourishments in Florida from
1995-2001 That might seem like a lot of money, until you see the revenue from coastal tourism — it was $21.6 billion in just one year — 2001
Trang 46 According to the researchers, "beach nourishment may actually mask or reduce the apparent impact of coastal hazards without changing the natural processes that drive them."