HAMPTON, Va., April 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Well over half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast. Sea-level rise is a reality. What happens next?

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On Tuesday, April 6, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, John Rummel, director of the Institute for Coastal Science and Policy will present "Going Coastal - Or is It Coming to Us? Shoreward Lessons for a Changing Planet" at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center. Rummel will discuss how human influences need to be understood and anticipated in order to preserve coastal regions in the years, centuries and millennia to come.

Media who wish to interview Rummel at a news briefing at NASA Langley at 1:15 p.m., Tuesday should contact Chris Rink at 864-6786 or by e-mail at christopher.p.rink@nasa.gov by noon on the day of the talk for credentials and entry to the center.

On Tuesday evening, Rummel will present a similar talk for the general public at 7:30 p.m. at the Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton. The evening presentation is free and no reservations are required.

Rummel's talk will address the problems and opportunities for future coastal residents, and how the projected benefits cannot be maintained without accounting for the changes that have and will take place.  

A professor of biology at East Carolina University (ECU,) Rummel operates the Institute for Coastal Science and Policy doctorate program in coastal resources management and ECU's diving and water safety activities. He also serves as the chair of the Panel on Planetary Protection of the International Council for Science's Committee on Space Research based in Paris.  

Rummel is a former National Research Council research associate at NASA Ames Research Center and has a doctorate from Stanford University for research in community ecology and evolution. An undergraduate at the University of Colorado in environmental biology, he was a U.S. Naval flight officer with five years service.

For more information about NASA Langley's Colloquium and Sigma Series Lectures:

http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/Lectures/

NASA Langley press releases are available automatically by sending an e-mail message to langley-news-request@lists.nasa.gov with the word Subscribe in the subject line. You will receive an e-mail asking you to visit a link to confirm the action. To unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to langley-news-request@lists.nasa.gov with the word Unsubscribe in the subject line.

SOURCE NASA

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