Coastal Adaptation: Jahns Distinguished Lecturer Cheryl Hapke Presents at AEG Annual Meeting

Aerial image of the City of South Padre Island, Texas, showing the 25 beach profile locations where beach and dune survey data have been collected since the early 1990s.

Integral Senior Consultant Cheryl Hapke, Ph.D., will deliver two presentations on coastal adaptation and resilience at the upcoming September 20–26, 2021, annual meeting of the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists (AEG).  Dr. Hapke received the AEG’s Jahns Distinguished Lecturer award last year, and is a celebrated speaker and subject matter expert on coastal resiliency and change.

As the outgoing 2020–21 Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Hapke will present “Adaptation in a Changing World: From Covid to Coastal Resilience,” an overview of how her role as Jahns Lecturer during the spread of Covid-19 in 2020 required unprecedented adaptation from in-person lectures to virtual conferencing. As part of her September 22 presentation, she draws parallels in how communities must also make adaptations to address future changes to coastlines from hurricanes, flooding, and sea level rise.  After her talk, she will introduce the new Jahns Lecturer for 2021–2022, Richard Wooten.

Also on September 22, Dr. Hapke will present “Evaluating Resilience of the Beach-Dune System at South Padre Island, Texas.” This presentation will highlight the assessment of the beach and dune system at South Padre Island that used a large time-series of beach profile data. The assessment determined the most resilient configuration of the beaches and dunes for planning for future storms and sea level rise. The presentation also includes an overview of the new data visualization tools developed as part of the project work. The tools provide an interactive interface that allows the user to easily view complex data sets, while supporting efficient data analysis and interpretation.

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Dr. Cheryl Hapke is a coastal geologist with more than 25 years of experience studying coastal evolution and coastal change processes in a variety of geomorphic settings. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz, and she worked for several decades with the U.S. Geological Survey as a research scientist. She is now is a senior consultant in coastal resiliency with Integral Consulting. Dr. Hapke also has an appointment as a research professor at the University of South Florida, College of Marine Science. Her current research focuses on coastal vulnerability and sea level rise adaptation, developing new tools and approaches to evolve the science of coastal hazards. She has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and technical reports, and served as a subject matter expert on coastal change hazards to local, state, and federal agencies and to international groups.