The last ten years have shown that Climate Change (CC) is a major global issue to attend to. The integration of its effects into coastal impact assessments and adaptation plans has gained great attention and interest, focused on avoiding or minimizing human lives and asset losses. Future scenarios of mean sea level rises and wave energy increase rates have then been computed, but downscaling still remains necessary to assess the possible local effects in small areas. In this context, the effects of CC on the wave climate in the Gulf of California (GC), Mexico, have received little attention, and no previous studies have tackled the long-term trend of wave climate at a regional scale. In this paper, the long-term trends of the wave height, wave period and wave energy in the GC were thus investigated, using the fifth-generation climate reanalysis dataset (ERA5). The long-term shoreline evolution was also examined from historical Landsat images, so as to identify erosional hotspots where intervention can be prioritized. The results indicate that both the mean and extreme wave regimes in the GC are getting more energetic and that two-thirds of the coast is suffering chronic erosion. A discrepancy between the trends of the wave period and wave height in some regions of the Gulf was also found. Finally, the importance of natural processes, human activity and CC in the shoreline change is highlighted, while addressing the need for future permanent field observations and studies in the GC.

Climate change adaptation is an increasingly important topic addressed in the face of the current and expected future impacts by climate change that the social, economic and ecological systems are experiencing worldwide. Despite the advances reported in the literature, adaptation to climate change is still considered a challenge to move from planning to the practical implementation of successful interventions. In this regard, identifying international key barriers, exchanges of experiences and lessons learned may facilitate the progress of the coasts’ sustainable and resilient future. The coast of Mexico is an excellent study area. High population densities occur along the coastal zone, whose main economic activity is related to primary and tertiary sectors. Additionally, a great diversity of coastal ecosystems exists, which are threatened by anthropogenic and hydrometeorological impacts. Under these circumstances, the population is becoming aware of the urgent need to adapt to the consequences of climate change. In this sense, this paper reviews research contributions concerning population perception to climate change and adaptation strategies in Mexico’s coastal zone. The findings highlight critical institutional difficulties and social barriers that have impeded the effective implementation of adaptation strategies to climate change in Mexico and consider steps to address them. However, adaptation strategies that show the prevention culture of some coastal communities have been found and also results of successful projects carried out, especially on mangrove forest and coral reef restoration, which are of essential importance to consider to progress on the path of a successful adaptation to climate change in Mexico.

Artificial reefs have proven to be an optimal and effective solution in stabilizing coastlines around the world. They are submerged structures that imitate the protection service provided by natural reefs accomplishing the functions of dissipating wave energy and protecting beach morphology, but also being an ecological solution. In this paper, 2D small-scale experiments were performed to analyze the hydrodynamic, morphological, and ecological behavior of an artificial reef constructed of modular elements. Two typical beach-dune profiles were constructed in a wave flume over which two locations of an artificial reef were tested. From these tests, transmission coefficients were obtained as well as the beach profile response to the presence of the artificial reef. These results are used to discuss about the hydrodynamic, morphological, and ecological performance of the artificial reef. The proposed artificial reef showed good morphological performance while its hydrodynamic function had limited success. In turn, the ecologic performance was theoretically addressed.

In the last decade, innovative beach nourishment strategies have been developed, driven by the increased worldwide interest in environmentally friendly coastal protection measures. In this context, the massive nourishment project of the Netherlands, known as Sand Engine, begun in 2011, has been hailed as a successful means of beach protection. Continuous monitoring, field campaigns, and numerical modeling have shown that the great volume of sand deployed is gradually transported by the waves and currents along the coastline, avoiding the need for repeated invasive, small scale beach replenishments. A very small, bell-shaped Sand Engine was designed to protect the beachfront at a tourist resort near Puerto Morelos, Mexico. To estimate the morphological response of the beach and the functioning of the micro Sand Engine as a sand reservoir, XBeach numerical modelling was applied to the project. The micro Sand Engine is seen to be a sustainable and eco-friendly coastal protection measure, especially applicable when a large nourishment project is not viable. Maintenance work for the nourishment is cost and time effective, and any negative impacts to sensitive ecosystems nearby can be detected and controlled quickly.

This paper presents the use of virtual level (VL) probes as an alternative image-based approach to investigate the interaction of waves with coastal structures in wave flume experiments. These probes are defined as regions of interest located at specific positions along the horizontal domain of the images, in which edge interfaces are detected and, thus, their vertical motions can be obtained. To demonstrate the use of the methodology, a critical condition of breaking waves interacting with a Cubipod homogeneous low-crested structure (HLCS) in a two-dimensional framework was selected. With the video recorded from the experiments, image calibration, processing, and analysis stages were implemented to analyze the performance of the HLCS in reducing wave elevations and to study the stability of the armor units. The present approach can be extended to a wide range of coastal structures applications where the interface detection between components of the scene is useful to observe the behavior of coastal structures, increasing effectiveness and alternatives to acquire precise data in 2D experimental tests.

Sand spits occur worldwide in different shapes, from a single, relatively simple arc to an irregular, crenulated, and complex barrier. Cross-shore and longshore sediment transport often influence spit dynamics (Nagarajan et al., 2015), strongly linked to wave energy and sediment supply. The present analysis focuses on a dynamic and complex spit at Tortugueros beach, a re-entrant bay, 1 km in length, on the Gulf of Mexico. Tortugueros beach is a wave-dominated beach with very fine to fine sand that forms a fairly gentle sloping beach profile. The sediment sources are longshore sediment transport and onshore sandbar migration, while sediment loss is due to long- and cross shore (during storms) transport. The region is micro-tidal, with mean and maximum high tide levels of 0.18 m and 0.92 m above the mean sea level. Given the high dynamics of the Tortugueros beach spit system and the lack of data measured on the beach, a monitoring system was developed to collect field data regularly to help us improve the understanding of the functioning of the coast on this beach, and the international knowledge related to the formation and morphological evolution of this type of spits in other similar beaches around the world.