Orrin H. Pilkey

Orrin Pilkey is a research professor, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Earth & Ocean Sciences, and Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS) within the Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

Pilkey is the recipient of many science, teaching, and public service awards, including, in 1999, the Outstanding Public Service Award from FEMA. He is co-editor and sometimes co-author of the ongoing 22 volume, state specific Living with the Shore series published by the Duke University Press, as well as The Corps and the Shore (Island Press), Living by the Rules of the Sea (Duke University Press), and A Celebration of the Worlds Barrier Islands (Columbia University Press).

The Rising Sea

On Shishmaref Island in Alaska, homes are being washed into the sea. In the South Pacific, small island nations face annihilation by encroaching waters. In coastal Louisiana, an area the size of a football field disappears every day. For these communities, sea level rise isn’t a distant, abstract fear: it’s happening now and it’s threatening their way of life.

In The Rising Sea, Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young warn that many other coastal areas may be close behind.