Preparing for Sea Level Rise

Wednesday, May 21 at 7:00 PM, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center

Kirk F. Bosma, PE Senior Coastal Engineer, Woods Hole Group Preparing for Sea Level Rise

Numerous coastal communities have developed, or started to develop, Coastal Climate Adaptation Plans that integrate projected sea-level rise influences into their planning process. In many coastal areas, the adverse impacts of climate change and sea-level rise may be reduced by a careful response to the increased threat of storm induced flood damage. The identification of appropriate adaptive actions (e.g. abandonment, retreat, elevation, protection, and engineering approaches) depends largely on an understanding of the present and future surge-induced flood risk.  

Our speaker, Kirk F. Bosma, PE, is a Senior Coastal Engineer and Team Leader of the Coastal Sciences, Engineering & Planning team at Woods Hole Group. He focuses on habitat restoration, shoreline protection, and climate change planning projects for a diverse client base. Kirk specializes in applying numerical models to optimize engineering designs and reduce overall project life cycle costs. This includes developing and employing numerical models for marsh restoration, sediment transport and nearshore spectral wave transformation, among other things. He also applies the latest data and numerical methods toward capturing current and future flooding risk for climate change vulnerability assessments.