Debora L. Ramírez Vargas with training in Civil Engineering. She has a multidisciplinary master's degree in Integrated Coastal Management in the Coastal-Marine Zone. She is a former fellow at the Institute of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where she obtained a Ph.D. in Engineering. Her research work lies in the process of coastal squeeze, coastal pressure and hydrological processes. She handles advanced mathematical methodologies of fuzzy logic and solution of coastal problems using multicriteria. She has participated in projects of the Atlas of Hazards and Risks of the State of Campeche and in the characterization of soil and subsoil due to hydrocarbon contamination in the Mexico fuel station.
She is currently doing a postdoctoral stay at the EPOMEX Institute in Campeche, Mexico.
Evaluating the state of coastal squeeze on the coast of Campeche, Mexico.Keywords: coastal ecosystems, hard structures, land use change, sea level rise
The loss of resistance and fragmentation in coastal ecosystems is worldwide importance issue, caused by natural and anthropic actions with different space-time scales that cause the phenomenon of coastal squeeze. The term coastal squeeze describes the process, in which rising sea levels and other factors, such as increased storminess and coastal subsidence, push coastal habitats landward. Also, the presence of hard structures along coastlines can create static, artificial margins between the land and the sea, restricting coastal habitats to a narrowed zone. Rising ground levels with respect to the coastal plain, which may be caused by impeded hydrosedimentary flow, can also form additional natural barriers. In particular, the coast of Mexico is vulnerable to increasing sea levels, yet other more rapidly occurring processes could be inducing coastal squeeze to a greater extent, such as coastal subsidence, extreme hydro-meteorological phenomena, land use changes and erosion stemming from the retention of sediments in upper coastal basins. The objective of this study was to analyze coastal squeeze along the coast of Campeche, Mexico, through identifying the variables that determinative coastal squeeze in this state. The processes examined land use changes, storm incidence and the presence of hard structures, among other factors, which have rapidly increased in the study area in recent years and have caused the loss of coastal ecosystems. Ultimately, one of the goals is to create a methodology that can quantitatively measure the effects of coastal squeeze in different coastal zones. This study presents the first steps using a weighted average, since it is a centralization average that gives a different importance to each of the values on which the average is calculated: the identification of variables that influence coastal squeeze and an assessment of their importance. The resulting methodology would serve as a tool for decision makers and for the sustainable management of coasts.