The coast is an important boundary; it’s a physical boundary, a conceptual boundary, and a jurisdictional boundary. Using the definition of the coast as the place where the land meets the water and the zone extends several kilometers inland and out into the water, the coastal zone is one of the most densely populated on earth, and most of that population live in a lower elevation coastal zone. Humans affect natural processes, so we need to look at the coast as a system which comprises a natural subsystem and a human subsystem and study the interactions of these two systems. 

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