The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Southern California Beaches by Linwood Pendleton, Senior Fellow, The Ocean Foundation

Dr. Pendleton has been studying California's beaches ever since he finished school. To help his study, he moved to Malibu, which had sun, surf and plastic surgery. He also spends time in downeast Maine, and is a proud taxpayer here! He doesn't know a lot about Maine's beaches, though, and will talk about California's beaches.

150 million visits a year to Los Angeles and Orange County public beaches and these beach goers spend 4 billion dollars annually. Also, most of the beaches are accessible at no coast or very low cost. This is where non-market values come into play. How much are people willing to pay above what they already pay for the beach? How much do beach visits help those living near the beach? In CA, he says, it helps to the tune of about 2 billion dollars annually.

Climate change is going to affect California's beaches, and there is a lot of work being done to model these changes. It's tough to do. Separating the change into parts, how will it work? If sea level goes up a meter, how will it affect the beaches? Who will the erosion impact? California doesn't have hurricanes, but big winter storms will combine with higher high tides and this will cause more erosion. How will that work? Also, as sea level rises, how will the sea floor change wave direction and speed? How are these changes going to alter beach-going patterns? Different beaches?

The study area is Los Angeles and Orange Counties. There are three modules in the study: the Beach Sediment Predictions; Beach Choice Models; and, Beach Nourishment Projections.

The way the Beach Choice Model works is by interviewing 1000 households, asking those who had been to the beach in the past year to participate in a yearlong survey of beach going. 900 households agreed to participate. Factors such as width, water quality, and amenities were looked at to see how they influenced visitation.

Starting with Inundation. He used a one-meter sea rise in 100 years along with a current sea level. First, with a meter of sea lever rise, beaches get an average of 10 meters narrower. Small beaches start to disappear, big beaches stay big. What happens to the small beaches, though, is that the beachgoers leave and go to bigger beaches. Thus, the impact is not evenly distributed, and large beaches will get new visitors (and their dollars) at the expense of smaller beaches. Big beaches will get more than 10 million dollars per year, who will lose about the same amount.

The net, though, is a loss of 12 million dollars. In CA, that's almost nothing. Lost Economic Wellbeing, however, is higher, at 60 million dollars because beach opportunities are more limited with less beaches. To be able to replace beach lost due to 1m of sea level rise would cost about 400 million dollars. 4 million dollars per year to keep the beaches might be worth it, he says.

However, these number haven't taken storms into account. Dr. Pendleton is going to run the same model using an El Nino year. Beach width changes wildly with storms: some get smaller and some increase. The effect on beach visitors is that the beaches that get smaller lose visitors and the ones that get bigger gain visitors. Thus, as above, the distribution is uneven. However, the beaches that gain visitors under this model are different than those under the "bath-tub" model shown above. The effects of extremely stormy years are about 9 million dollars of loss, per year, for an overall loss of 37 dollars. The real kicker here is that the cost of replacing sand loss from one big El Nino storm is almost 400 million dollars (the same as due to sea level rise alone), a huge number and no longer an economically-sound investment.

What to do? Size matters, but bigger is not always better. Really large beaches actually improve when they get smaller. Beach size, though, is just one attribute that brings people to the beach. Other factors are water quality; better parking; lifeguards; amenities. What does this mean for Maine? There are fewer beaches here, and they're farther apart. In CA, you can just go down the road, in Maine, visitors have less of a choice and will have to move farther, taking their money with them. Thus, the impact will be greater as Maine beach goers spend their money far away. Maine beaches are not as wide as in CA, and there are typically less opportunities there because many of Maine's beaches are state beaches with limited entertainment.

How to offset beach loss? Increase public access to public and private beaches. Improve water quality. Provide more alternative activities (volleyball, bike paths, retail, wildlife viewing, surfing and wave riding).