UCF Works to Research Rising Sea Levels

With the effects of climate change hitting close to shore, two teams tackle summers that are coming too soon and cold spells that are freezing Florida.

“It’s a great combination of strength actually,” said Michael Johnson, dean of the College of Sciences. “What we have in biology and engineering together is a real strength in what you might call coastal studies.”

One team is led by Scott Hagen, a professor of civil, environmental and construction engineering and the director of UCF’s Coastal Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling & Predictive Simulations Laboratory. The other team is led by Reed Noss, the provost’s distinguished research professor in biology. The two teams are cooperative, have some grants together and are co-investigators on some funded research.

“Originally, or I could say historically, what we have done are simulations of tides, wind waves and hurricane storm surge,” Hagen said. “And we have developed in my lab — with my students and my post docs and my colleagues — an ability to do a tide, wind wave and hurricane storm surge simulation that’s really second to none.”

Hagen’s team is working with the coastal land margin, where the land meets the sea, to assess potential damages made by future sea-level rising.

“You’re looking at, first and foremost, impacts to the built environment with respect to infrastructure. That is bridges, sea walls, navigational channels, all of these different engineered structures,” Hagen said. But he also emphasized that it goes beyond the engineering department.

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This story, by Ashley White, was published by Central Florida Future, Feb. 6, 2014