An increasingly important area of marine geology is coastal geology. Throughout history, the human population has shown a tendency to settle along the world's 273,000 miles of coastline. The effects of humans inhabiting our shores and coastlines have become increasingly apparent. Coastal pollution and waste disposal are creating problems and costing government and industry billions of dollars in research and remediation efforts. Although the percentage of people living on the coast is expected to remain fairly constant over the next few decades, total numbers are expected to increase as population continues to increase.

In addition to human effects on our shores, natural coastal processes such as rising sea level, erosion, and sediment transport, and storm-related events such as flooding, severe erosion, and storm overwash make our coastal areas dynamic environments. Often, humans react by attempting to protect structures situated along the coast, including homes, businesses, and roads, even when these structures are located on land forms, such as barrier beaches, that are "temporary" in a geologic sense of time. To protect these structures, coastal engineers have developed and constructed seawalls, jetties, groins, and bridges. More recently, natural or "soft solutions" such as constructed wetlands and salt marshes have been developed to slow the effects of coastal processes. Coastal geologists and coastal engineers, working with oceanographers from each of the disciplines, will be instrumental in forming policy and management options to minimize the conflicts between coastal development and natural processes.