"The goal of The Changing California Coast is to provide perspective on the realities of living on the California coast, its challenges and issues, and the nitty gritty of what to consider before buying or building a house. The book achieves this aim by providing a tutorial on the potential hazards of coastal living, and systematically covering the coast from border to border. A must read for anyone whose idea of the coast is based on too many episodes of Baywatch."--Paul D. Komar, author of Beach Processes and Sedimentation "California's coast is a living landscape endlessly besieged by waves and tides, upland erosion, seismic forces, and human efforts to secure land's edge in place. A geography of awesome beauty and constant conflict, the coast is where people want to be. Living with the Changing California Coast is a must read for property owners, developers, investors, public officials, and activists who care about our coast's future. This book lays out the consequences of our tendency to wall up the coast and what we might do to reverse the trend. A most thorough, alarming and compelling tale of what is happening to our shoreline. Will policy makers listen?"--Peter Douglas, Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission

"California is the most populous state in the nation and has attracted immigrants since the gold rush in 1848, whether by accident or intention. Although California also has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state as a result of straddling a plate boundary and because of its geologic adolescence, this hasn't deterred others from moving here. In addition to active faults and earthquakes, the state has a myriad of other natural hazards that frequently wreak havoc on the state and its residents, whether floods, landslides and debris flows, sea-level rise and coastal erosion, an occasional tsunami, and now we have climate change with its more frequent droughts and wildland fires, and more concentrated winter rainfall. This book is about the state's vulnerability to natural hazards, why and where we have these events, what has happened in the past and what we can anticipate in the future. And no place in the state is far from one natural hazard or another. Most Californians have an innate interest in these events and not many years goes by without a catastrophe of one sort or another, which can affect entire towns or regions. California Catastrophes is the only book focused on the natural disaster history of the state"--