46 minutes Closed Captioned Grades 7-12, College, Adult Directed by Howard E. Green Produced by CBC's "The Nature of Things" DVD Purchase $79, Rent $45 US Release Date: 1994 Copyright Date: 1993 DVD ISBN: 1-59458-974-7 VHS ISBN: 1-56029-596-1 Subjects American Studies Climate Change/Global Warming Development Ecology Environment Geography Habitat Oceans and Coasts Science Technology Society Technology Tides Urban and Regional Awards and Festivals Silver Apple, National Educational Media Network Competition |
The Shoreline Doesn't Stop Here Anymore Coastal erosion and our mostly futile efforts to hold the ocean at bay.
"Erosion," says host David Suzuki, "is the eternal dance between waves, wind and land." It's nature's way of transporting sand from one place to another. Nothing is lost, it just changes places - until humans interfere.
As this program clearly shows, people are not content to let nature have its way. In a futile effort, developers, homeowners, and businesses try various engineering solutions to combat the sea. The sea, however, always wins. Jetties, groynes, seawalls and beach renourishment programs are all attempts to defeat the tides. An eight million dollar project of the US Army Corps of Engineers at Folly Beach, South Carolina, was destroyed in March 1993 when the storm of the century hit with hurricane-force winds. The project had attempted to dredge massive amounts of sand and pump it onto the shrinking beachfront. All this work was to replace a beach whose erosion was caused by jetties built just north of the site by the Corps of Engineers some years before. As Orrin Pilkey, Professor of Geology at Duke University points out, "There is no erosion problem in nature until someone builds some-thing next to the shoreline to measure it by." Reviews "Informative, well-produced, and engaging presentation. Coastal erosion is certainly not one of the more widely covered environmental issues...and this work would provide a good introduction to the topic for general library collections and schools." *** Video Librarian "A very good, up-to-date film that holds one's interest throughout...It is vintage Pilk |