Living with Water

Resilient design adapting to sea level rise

By the end of the century, scientists expect seas to rise 1.3 to 3.9 feet, depending on how much humans keep warming the atmosphere.

At that time, lots of infrastructure and building envionment will be inundated. As to marin city, the communities and roads adjcent to sea shoreline will be in danger.

Faced with the site, I want to firstly say something about the influence on habitat and species of sea level rise. Tidal marsh lands are around the shoreline of San Pablo Bay. Marshes and wetlands can mitigate the impact of tidal and protect the construction land area. Meanwhile, cordgrass and brackish bulrush and tule dominate there, which provides habitat for animals and ensure biodiversity. However, humans are biophilia, innate affiliation to water. As a result, construction area are likely to locate along the shorelines, destroying the habitat of animal species.

Birds in Bay area follow the rhythms of the tides and seaons. They use the shoreline place like tidal marsh or tidal flat area to rest and feed at low tide. Also, many mammal species need higher ground and islands during high tide period. This means the ideal haitat for thess animals will disappear as sea level rises and flood more frequently happens.

What we can do is to slow the rate of sea level rise and adapt ourselves by resilient design near the coast. Resilient design not only design for present, but also design for future. It is possible for us to develop design strategies that are cost effective and can be implemented widely. For example we can propose different strategies to site according to the distance to banks. In the past, I proposed strategies of Resist- Adapt- Drainage to deal with water and flooding problem. But problems with sea level rise is complex and is closely related to climate change.