Coastal response to climate change is driven by complex interactions among global (sea level), regional (climate, sea level), and local (sedimentation/erosion, bathymetry) controls. Studies of a Pharonic harbor along the Egyptian Red Sea coast and a strandplain in southern Brazil demonstrate the coupled impacts of changes in sea level and the types and supply rates of fluvial sediment. Geophysical, sedimentological, chronological, archeological and geochemical investigations at these sites uncovered a dominant role of terrestrial climate on the rates and sedimentologic nature of coastal progradation. Together, these studies reveal a deeper understanding of the nature by which modifications in terrestrial precipitation patterns, driven by climate change, can overprint the coastal impacts of moderate sea-level changes.

Christopher Hein is an assitant professor in the VIMS Department of Physical Sciences. He received a B.S. from Cornell University in 2003, a Ph.D. in coastal marine geology from Boston University in 2012, and completed a postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research interests include the integrated impacts of climate and sea-level change in the evolution of coastal systems (barrier islands, strandplains), the climatic forcing of fluvial sediment supply to the coastal zone, and the effects of climate change on terrestrial organic carbon cycle dynamics.

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