title: Managing coastal environments under climate change: Pathways to adaptation.
abstract: This paper deals with the question of how to manage vulnerable coastal systems so as to make them sustainable under present and future climates. This is interpreted in terms of the coastal functionality, mainly natural services and support for socio-economic activities. From here we discuss how to adapt for long term trends and for short terms episodic events using the DPSIR framework. The analysis is presented for coastal archetypes from Spain, Ireland and Romania, sweeping a range of meteo-oceanographic and socio-economic pressures, resulting in a wide range of fluxes among them those related to sediment. The analysis emphasizes the variables that provide a higher level of robustness. That means mean sea level for physical factors and population density for human factors. For each of the studied cases high and low sustainability practices, based on stakeholders preferences, are considered and discussed. This allows proposing alternatives and carrying out an integrated assessment in the last section of the paper. This assessment permits building a sequence of interventions called adaptation pathway that enhances the natural resilience of the studied coastal systems and therefore increases their sustainability under present and future conditions.
authors.affiliation: Laboratori d'Enginyeria Marítima, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, C/ Jordi Girona, 1-3 Ed. D1 Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain; Jordi Girona, 1-3, Ed. D1, 08031 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: agustin.arcilla@upc.edu.
authors.forename: Agustín
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Arcilla
authors.affiliation: Laboratori d'Enginyeria Marítima, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, C/ Jordi Girona, 1-3 Ed. D1 Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: manuel.garcia-leon@upc.edu.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: García-León
authors.affiliation: Laboratori d'Enginyeria Marítima, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, C/ Jordi Girona, 1-3 Ed. D1 Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: vicente.gracia@upc.edu.
authors.forename: Vicente
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gracia
authors.affiliation: MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork, Ireland. Electronic address: r.devoy@ucc.ie.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Devoy
authors.affiliation: Natl. Institute of Marine Geology and GeoEcology - GeoEcoMar, Str. Dimitrie Onciul 23-25, Sector 2, 024053 Bucharest, Romania. Electronic address: astanica@geoecomar.ro.
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stanica
authors.affiliation: MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork, Ireland. Electronic address: J.Gault@ucc.ie.
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gault
keywords: Climate change; Coastal management; European coast; Integrated assessment