The Impact of Recent Storms on California's Coastline: A Discussion with Kiki Patsch and Ryan Anderson | Shorewords!

January 20, 2023

Retreat or rebuild? Navigating the changing coast

On this episode of Shorewords!, join host Lesley Ewing in conversation with Kiki Patsch and Ryan Anderson about their paper, Adapting to Shoreline Retreat: Finding a Path Forward. We spoke about this paper in September 2021, but in light of the recent series of devastating storms that have attacked the California coast in late 2022 and early 2023, it was time for another conversation. Certain events can become reference points for future decisions and these storms may be such a reference. As Kiki said, people need to hear new messages 57 times before the information sinks in.   Perhaps the hundreds of news stories can accelerate that process. Both Kiki and Ryan have been checking out the coast; listen to this podcast to hear their observations from their local beaches and how these storms may change perceptions about coastal dynamics.

Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
Lesley Ewing

Hello. I’m Lesley Ewing, host of Shorewords!. This podcast combines two of my favorite things – the ocean and books. I learned to swim before I could walk and looked forward each summer to my family’s vacation at Ocean City, Maryland. As a student I was interested in science and engineering and became an environmental engineer before learning that there was something called coastal engineering. Both my 1 st and 2 nd mid-life crises resulted in me going back to school – first for a Masters of Engineering at UC Berkeley and later for a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. The first crisis also moved me from DC to the SF Bay. The second crisis reminded me how much I liked to read. Getting a Ph.D. while working a 40+-hour/week job meant that my only reading was work reports, text books and technical articles. They were all important and interesting books, but as soon as school ended, I replaced my academic text books with broader literature and realized that the coast was often a character in the fiction and non-fiction that I read. I am still fascinated by every visit to the ocean and remain in awe of what others write about the coast.