GIS Analysis of Global Impacts from Sea Level Rise

Abstract

Future sea level rise caused by climate change would disrupt the physical processes, economic activities, and social systems in coastal regions. Based on a hypothetical global sea level increase of one to six meters, we developed GIS methods to assess and visualize the global impacts of potential inundation using the best available global datasets. After susceptible areas were delineated, we estimated that the size of the areas is between 1.055 (one meter) to 2.193 million km 2 (six meters). Population in the susceptible areas was estimated to range from 108 (one meter) to 431 million (six meters) people. Among the seven land-cover types in the susceptible areas, forest and grassland account for more than 60 percent for all the increments of sea level rise. A suite of interactive visualization products was also developed to understand and communicate the ramifications of potential sea level rise.

Impacts of sea-level rise-induced erosion on the Catalan coast

“…In spite of this, most of the existing impact studies focus on inundation (e.g. Titus and Richman 2001;Li et al 2009), with few cases specifically dealing with induced erosion (e.g. Hinkel et al 2013).…”

Preliminary global assessment of terrestrial biodiversity consequences of sea-level rise mediated by climate change

“…A new and more robust GIS analysis method developed by Li et al (2009) was used in this study to overcome the above shortcomings. In the method, cells below a projected sealevel rise are initially flagged.…”

“…The method was implemented as several steps in a GIS raster analysis framework. Details of the method are referred to Li et al (2009).…”

Marshalling existing biodiversity data to evaluate biodiversity status and trends in planning exercises

“…For example, the European CORINE land cover project (http://www.eea.europa.eu/) provides detailed geospatial summaries of land cover change from 1990 on, opening opportunities to assess impacts of aspects of global change on species' distributions. In a parallel fashion, but on longer time scales, impacts of climate change (global warming) can be evaluated thanks to availability of model scenarios characterizing future climate conditions (e.g., Hadley Climate Centre's HadCM3, for various emissions scenarios for 2020 and 2050) and of models of marine intrusion owing to increasing sea level with warming climates (Li et al 2009;Menon et al 2010).…”