Accelerating growth of human coastal populations at the global and continent levels: 2000–2018

Current human population growth along Earth's coasts is on a collision path with anticipated consequences of increasing natural and anthropogenic induced coastal hazards. Using recently-available ambient, dasymetric data, we developed methods to estimate annual continental and global coastal populations from (2000-2018) measured horizontally from the shoreline inward. We found: (1) large concentrations of population in relatively small bands and regions along the coast (~ 2 billion within 50 km and ~ 1 billion within 10 km); (2) higher growth rates of coastal population than inland population (an addition of 463 million within 50 km and 233 million within 10 km); (3) strong influence of distance from the coast…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC05, 00OR22725
• OR
  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  Award: AC05-00OR22725