Table 1. Ranking of coastal vulnerability index variables
Figure 1. Map of the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) for the U.S. Atlantic Coast. The CVI shows the relative vulnerability of the coast to changes due to future rise in sea-level. Areas along the coast are assigned a ranking from low to high risk, based on the analysis of physical variables that contribute to coastal change.
Figure 2. Histograms showing the frequency of occurrence and cumulative frequency of coastal vulnerability index (CVI) values for U.S. Atlantic coast. The vertical red lines delineate the chosen ranges for low, moderate, high, and very high risk areas.
Figure 3. Bar graph showing the percentage of shoreline along the U.S. Atlantic coastal in each risk category. The graph also shows the total length of shoreline (in kilometers) in each risk category. The total length of mapped shoreline in this study is 23,384 km.
Low: 2326 km
Moderate: 2332 km
High: 2599 km
Very High: 2215 km
Figure 4. Map of the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) for the New York to New Jersey region.
Figure 5. Map of the geomorphology variable for the New York to New Jersey region. The open-ocean shoreline is composed primarily of high-risk sandy barrier island, while risk due to geomorphology is lower for lagoons and along the bluffs of northern Long Island.
Figure 6. Map of the coastal slope variable for the New York to New Jersey region. The coastal slope is relatively steep (low risk) throughout much of this area, but is quite low (high risk) in southern New Jersey.
Figure 7. Map of the shoreline erosion/accretion rate variable for the New York to New Jersey region. The smaller-scale variations in the coastal vulnerability indix (CVI) values (see Figure 4) are influenced primarily by changes in the shoreline erosion rate.
Figure 8. Map of the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) for the North Carolina to Georgia region. Also see New York to New Jersey Region.
Figure 9. Map of the geomorphology variable for the the North Carolina to Georgia region. Like the New York to New Jersey region, geomorphology is still the dominant variable influencing the coastal vulnerability Index (CVI) values.
Figure 10. Map of the relative sea-level rise variable for the NorthCarolina to Georgia region. The rate of sea-level change is lowest at Cape Fear, North Carolina, due to long-term tectonic uplift of the mid-Carolina Platform High.
Figure 11. Map of mean wave height variable for North Carolina to Georgia region. The risk due to wave height varies between the north and south sides of Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout, and generally decreased from Cape Hatteras southward into the Georgia embayment. This reflects differences in wave exposure due to shoreline orientation, as well as the increasing continental shelf width from North Carolina to Georgia.
Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI)