July 2019
Adapting to a Changing Coast (for Property Owners)
Adapting to a Changing Coast for Property Owners is a booklet that provides property owners with options and resources for responding to the changing bluff and beaches of Lake Michigan. This document presents options, rather than prescriptions, in five themes that represent practices that property owners in Southeast Wisconsin could consider to address coastal hazards. Adapting to a Changing Coast was published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute and the 16 options described in the booklet were chosen based on experience and insights of experts in an array of fields ranging from public engagement to regional planning to coastal engineering. The booklet is available online and to download for free.
Audience
This booklet is designed to help property and homeowners and community officials build resilience to coastal hazards that result from variable Great Lakes water levels and storms.
Decision Support
Ultimately, the decisions about what to do in the face of variable lake levels, eroding beaches, and unstable bluffs belong to the people that live with those issues. Adapting to a Changing Coast presents a diversity of options that are intended to help homeowners and community officials build resilience to coastal hazards that result from variable Great Lakes water levels and storms. Included in the publication are structural options for preventing erosion and stabilizing bluffs that rely on armoring shorelines and reshaping the landscape as well as options that rely on living with natural processes and retreating from the coast. To help guide homeowners’ decisions, the booklet describes the benefits and challenges associated with these options.
Download the booklet for free!