As more and more people migrate to the world’s coasts, their impacts are increasingly felt. In many countries, the majority of the population now lives few tens of kilometers of the coastline and as a result, the pressure on the coasts are being intensified. This book is a very clearly written and descriptive treatment of how and to what extent human activities have altered coastal landforms and processes. It details the many ways beaches and dunes are eliminated, altered, and replaced and the differences between natural landforms and the human artifacts that replace them. While there are many examples of human impacts that are easily recognizable to us all, Karl Nordstrom’s treatment of these varying impacts is very thorough and systematic and also includes a myriad of activities that are not commonly appreciated or recognized. Activities treated include elimination of landforms, stabilization and destabilization, sand mining and nourishment, construction of every type imaginable (from boardwalks to breakwaters), waste disposal, military activities, channel alterations, sand supply reduction and disruption.

Griggs, G.B. 2001. Review of Beaches and Dunes of Developed Coasts, by K.F. Nordstrom. Oceanography 14(1):90, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2001.55.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.