Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation of Coastal Zones to Global Change - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 132

each other. The natural coastal systems include different types of
geological formation and ecosystem: rocky coasts, estuaries, barrier
islands, beaches, sand dunes, estuaries, lagoons, deltas, river mouths,
wetlands and coral reefs. Moreover, these systems support a large
variety of services of a social, economic and cultural nature and are
affected by various human activities. For human coastal systems, or
coastal anthroposystems, it is possible to distinguish three different
components: the first consists of the built environment, including
settlements (residential and tourism facilities), the land and maritime
transport infrastructures, industrial infrastructures and port facilities;
the second comprises the human activities that take place on the coast,
such as fishing, aquaculture, sport, leisure, tourism and activities that
take place away from the coast but which exert pressure on the coast,
such as the construction of dams, pollution of the soil and surface
waters and deforestation; finally, the third component is
the institutional, legislative, judicial and cultural activities that support
the territorial organization and governing of coastal zones. Several
recent studies have shown the advantages, for sustainable
development, of considering the coastal zones as integrated
ecological-social-economic systems [HOP 12, NEW 12].
Furthermore, it should be emphasized that coastal zone management
must integrate the natural drivers of change and the anthropogenic
actions that affect their dynamics.
4.1.2. Global change
Global environmental change refers to planetary-scale changes; in
a broad sense it results from the evolution of the Earth system and the
interactions and physical, chemical and biological processes in its
subsystems - the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the
atmosphere and the biosphere. Depending on their origin, natural and
anthropogenic global changes can be distinguished; the identification
and differentiation between the two is often difficult and subject to
significant uncertainties. Many examples of natural global change can
be found since the formation of the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago.
One of the most important is the very slow movement of tectonic
plates, which is the origin of the formation of continents, mountains,
oceans and marine currents. The global climate has undergone