The northwestern seashore, from Taoyuan County to Hsinchu County, is retreating as a result of human activity, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Central Geological Survey (CGS) said.
The latest survey report, released last year, showed that the coastline south of Datan Village (大潭) in Guanyin Township (觀音), Taoyuan County, and the section of coastline from Hukou Township (湖口), Hsinchu County, to Siangshan District (香山) in Hsinchu City was retreating.
CGS Director Lin Chao-tsung (林朝宗) said such erosion could have been caused by manmade structures along the coast, such as the Datan Power Station and the Hsinchu Fishing Harbor.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
While some sections of Taiwan’s coastline are retreating, the report shows there are also sections of shoreline pushing outward into the sea.
As manmade structures change the course of rivers, the sand and soil carried downstream settles only on the banks of a river mouth without manmade structures, making coastlines shrink on one side, but grow on the other, he said.
Under normal circumstances, the coastline should be growing evenly, Lin said.
The CGS said the government should take a series of measures to prevent extensive shrinking of coastlines.
Although concrete blocks are now piled along coastlines to prevent erosion, Lin said that concrete blocks would only work for a limited period of time and erosion would still occur sooner or later.
He said the best way to prevent erosion would be to make better plans before building anything along the coast.
The latest report released by the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency showed that as of last year, Taiwan had 1,321.9km of coastline, or 3km more than in 2008. However, this was the result of manmade structures, as cemented coastline — including embankment, harbor and reclaimed lands — had grown 3km since 2008.
At the moment, 55.5 percent of Taiwan’s coastline has been cemented, about 0.1 percent more than in 2008.
As climate change progresses, sea levels continue to rise, Lin said, and the concept of reclaiming land from the sea should be changed, since experts are becoming more uncertain about how long manmade structures will last.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS