ABSTRACT
A dystopian backward glance from 2050 serves as a warning of what can go wrong if planners, elected decision-makers, and those who depend on them do not use their knowledge responsibly. Widely shared values in the 1970s set cities throughout Oregon on a trajectory of increasingly healthful environments. Cascadia was created by violent earthquakes and massive floods, as every schoolchild knows. Each feature of the landscape speaks of it: the towering Cascade Range and the Columbia Gorge carved through the mountains by the Missoula Floods over 12,000 years ago. The immediate hinterland of coastal beaches had been particularly revealing of the history of tsunamis tied to major seismic events. Ponds and wetlands formed behind beaches generate organic, peaty sediments that accumulate in layers during quiet times, often lasting a century or more, but each major tsunami shifts a hefty layer of sand and gravel from the beach and deposits it over the wetlands.
