Living with shore protection structures: A review

Shore protection structures will continue to be built and maintained to protect coastal infrastructure. This review identifies factors influencing our ability to retain or restore natural features or construct artificial habitats on beaches and dunes in the presence of these structures. Protection structures are visual and physical intrusions into natural landscapes, and they alter natural processes and introduce exotic habitat. Impacts on landforms and habitats vary depending on the type of structure and its size, shape, orientation, type of materials used, age and state of repair. Changes will occur to any structure through time, and decisions must be made to supplement, rebuild, replace, or remove them or allow them to deteriorate. Decisions about removing protection structures are problematic because they might already have habitat value, and the effects of removal are as difficult to predict as the effects of their original emplacement. Creative alternatives to traditional structures can be applied to retain or enhance some of the natural values of landforms and habitats. This can occur by making structures smaller, placing them below ground or water level, selecting construction materials that enhance habitat, or using beach fill to overcome undesirable effects. Decisions are required on whether the enhancement of habitat by modifying traditional structures is actually desirable. Humans must now be considered intrinsic agents of landscape evolution, and decisions on how, when and where to place, modify or remove protection structures depend on numerous human inputs, requiring interventions that have an interdisciplinary perspective and are placed in a societal context.

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