Timing Managed Retreat for Robust Coastal Adaptation Strategies

Prabhat Hegde; Adam B Pollack; Vikrant Vaze; Klaus Keller

doi:10.1029/2025EF007538

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Timing Managed Retreat for Robust Coastal Adaptation Strategies

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Timing Managed Retreat for Robust Coastal Adaptation Strategies

Prabhat Hegde, Adam B Pollack, Vikrant Vaze and Klaus Keller

Earth's future, Vol.14(6), e2025EF007538

06/01/2026

DOI: 10.1029/2025EF007538

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Abstract

Many coastal communities rely on recurring beach nourishment to mitigate erosion risks. However, increasing hazards threaten the long‐term viability of this strategy. This raises the question: When to retreat, if at all? Past studies provide important insights but are typically silent on the timing of retreat, the effect of uncertainties, and the trade‐offs between objectives. Here, we address these gaps through a case study of Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie County, Florida. We analyze the effects of uncertainties and quantify trade‐offs between key objectives. We show that accounting for uncertainty changes the expected performance of adaptation strategies and alters the trade‐offs between key objectives. In our case study, only retreat‐triggering strategies satisfy a commonly used benefit‐cost ratio threshold by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Our results suggest that initiating retreat a few decades earlier than recommendations from approaches employed by previous studies can improve robustness under uncertainty and better balance competing objectives.

Infrastructure

Soil Erosion

Adaptation

Armed forces

Beach erosion

Beach nourishment

Beaches

Case studies

Coastal erosion

Costs

Decision making

Hazard mitigation

Objectives

Pareto optimum

Uncertainty

Details

Title: Subtitle: Timing Managed Retreat for Robust Coastal Adaptation Strategies
Creators: Prabhat Hegde - Dartmouth College
Adam B Pollack - University of Iowa
Vikrant Vaze - Dartmouth College
Klaus Keller - Dartmouth College
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Earth's future, Vol.14(6), e2025EF007538
DOI: 10.1029/2025EF007538
ISSN: 2328-4277
eISSN: 2328-4277
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Grant note: Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College Dartmouth College National Science Foundation: ICER-2103754
We are grateful to Jorge Lorenzo-Trueba, Will Veatch, James Doss-Gollin, Vivek Srikrishnan, Casey Helgeson, and Skip Wishbone for invaluable inputs. We thank Samantha Roth, Casey Helgeson and Lynee Turek-Hankins for providing a friendly review of the manuscript. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH) under NSF award ICER-2103754 with additional support from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth College. We are thankful to members of the Keller Lab Group for their inputs. Any errors, opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or other funding entities.
Language: English
Date published: 06/01/2026
Academic Unit: School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability
Record Identifier: 9985176764002771

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