Poland - Coastal Hazards

Poland - Coastal Hazards

Current coastal hazards within Poland include 

coastal floods, sea level rise, and primarily erosion.

Coastal Floods/Sea Level Rising-
    Poland has a coastline that runs along the Baltic Sea and is semi-enclosed with shallow blackish water. Up to 18% of the entire coastline length is composed of cliffs and behind dunes and coastal plains are depressions of land about 1.8m below sea level. The last recorded average of sea level rise in Poland amounted to 3.2mm between years of 1992 and 2016. As discussed before, Poland has struggled consistently with flooding and while water levels depend on the volume of water flowing in from the North Sea long lasting storm surges along the coast can caused even more extreme flooding within Poland.


Coastal Erosion -
    In Poland, the total length of the coast suffers from moderate to high levels of erosion which is about 41.5% of the open sea coast. A lot of Poland's coast consists of dunes and due to this environment there is an extreme erosion rate in these areas. Strong coastal erosion occurred primarily when 2 or more storm surges happened back to back. Erosion was strongest on peaches lower than 2m and encouraged a mean rate of dune erosion of 2.3m^3.

Mitigations -
    Current adaptation strategies for sea level rising in Poland are infrastructure measures. A city within Poland (Gdansk) technical solutions aid in decreasing vulnerability. Mitigation measures include construction of reservoirs, flood dykes, polders, dry reservoirs and bypasses. In regards to erosion, systems have already been developed towards about 26% of the Polish coastline. For erosion, "groynes" (protection structures to reduce longshore drift and trap sediments) have been utilized as well as dykes, and water canals that are connecting the port to the sea. Storm gates, improving upon drainage, and pumping systems are all mitigations that are thought to be very beneficial and needed in order to reduce coastal floods, rising sea levels, and erosion.