Alaska Coastline Eroding 45 Feet/Year

Saw this on Treehugger today -

A study out of the University of Colorado at Boulder shows that a substantial piece of the northern Alaska coastline is eroding at an astonishing rate of 45 feet a year thanks to three major threats - less ice, more waves, and warmer water.

Using time lapse cameras and submerged ocean buoys, the University of Colorado team recorded the erosion measurements.



As reported in Discovery News, "what's happening along the shores of the Beaufort Sea might hint at what's to come in the rest of the Arctic, where a slower pace of erosion is harder to measure but equally important, said lead researcher Benjamin Jones, a geographer with the United States Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska."