Tag Archives: sea level rise

Connecting Communities to Coastal Resilience: How Can Public Participation in Wetland Restoration and Management Enhance Sustainability for New York?

Abstract

Coastal resiliency, or the defense against extreme weather events, is becoming significantly more critical to the livelihood of coastal communities as the frequency and intensity of storms increases and is exacerbated by rising sea levels due to climate change. In 2012 Superstorm Sandy cost $42 billion across New York State in structural damage and displaced many residents from their homes for prolonged periods of time as storm surges surpassed record highs for the region. New York’s coastal communities need to be better prepared for future climate related scenarios and resiliency planning needs to include protection of public health and safety, reduced risk of structural and non-structural damage, and improved recovery strategies. Coastal wetlands provide a critical line of defense against more intense and frequent weather events due to their ability to mitigate storm damages by providing natural resistance from flooding through rainwater absorption, protecting shorelines from erosion by buffering wave action and sediment capture, as well as their capability to naturally accrete, or build up vertically, to contend with sea level rise trends. In this paper I will explore how to best bring the scientific research and evidence of the anthropogenic impacts to tidal wetlands to a practical level of understanding on the community level. By building connections between the community and the natural coastal landscape, a sense of care for the environment and a relationship to the value it has for coastal resiliency is more likely to develop among residents, which may significantly improve the success and sustainability of coastal wetland restoration and management initiatives. 

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo speaking during a tour of storm damage on Staten Island after Sandy, with President Obama, Senator Charles E. Schumer and, second from left, Shaun Donovan, the federal housing secretary.
Credit…Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Significance of coastal wetland ecosystems

Coastal wetlands are highly productive areas that provide important ecosystem services. These environments contain a diversity of native vegetation and support abundant aquatic, avian, and terrestrial wildlife. Healthy functioning wetlands also improve water quality by filtering stormwater runoff and metabolizing excess nutrients which is critical for clarifying the water and creating more suitable conditions for natural resource and commodity production and supporting commercial and recreational estuary-related business.

These ecosystems are also vital in in the context of climate change and sea level rise. Tidal wetlands have important carbon sequestration abilities and may be significant in relation to the urgency to reduce global carbon footprints contributing to planetary warming. Vigorous wetland conditions also provide protection to public health and infrastructure by providing natural resistance to storms and flooding which is increasingly becoming more important with rising seas and more frequent extreme weather events. Protection and restoration of the natural estuarine environment and its ability to mitigate storm damages should be of the highest priority for New York’s coastal communities.

Interacting stresses on tidal wetlands

Historical anthropogenic impacts to New York’s coastal wetlands over the last century such as grid-ditching existing marshes for mosquito control, filling of wetlands for development, construction of infrastructure segmenting habitat, and displacing native species with human introduced non-natives has caused ecosystem degradation and loss of wetland acreage. Further degradation of tidal wetland habitat has occurred due to urbanization and indeed much of New York’s population is concentrated around these coastal environments. In fact, coastal wetland systems arguably serve more human uses than any other ecosystem and are the sites of the world’s most intense commercial activity and population growth with approximately 75% of the worldwide human population living in coastal regions.

Anthropogenic eutrophication, or excess nutrient inputs to coastal system from human activities, has become a serious problem; nitrogen being the primary nutrient of concern for waters in the New York region. Nitrogen inputs to New York’s coastal estuarine systems from human land uses generally originate from fertilizers, stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflows (CSOs), and wastewater systems. Excess anthropogenic nitrogen inputs promote a series of positive feedbacks by altering ecosystem processes leaving coastal wetlands more susceptible to the erosive forces of storms, sea level rise, and gravitational slumping. This cascade of changes can eventually result in deficient ecosystem functioning, threaten the long-term stability of marsh systems, and cause wetland acreage loss. Climate change can further compound these issues since areas in the Northeast U.S., including New York, are expected to experience increases in precipitation as well as warmer conditions during the winter months, resulting in more precipitation as rain and less as snow, which can increase the frequency of runoff events. More stormwater runoff and CSOs translates to higher levels of nitrogen reaching estuarine habitats and increased levels of degradation to wetlands.

Calving of vital creek bank as a result of low marsh cordgrass.
Mark Bertness. http://www.bertnesslab.com

Connecting communities to wetlands through management and restoration

Nutrient management policy implementation paired with wetland restoration projects can potentially repair damages to tidal marsh habitats and thus preserve their healthy ecological functioning and the ecosystem services that they provide to coastal communities including coastal resilience. However, many residents in New York’s coastal communities who live in close proximity to these habitats and are largely contributing anthropogenic eutrophication through their everyday activities, may not see the intricate connections, which I have endeavored to lay out in my paper, that wetland ecosystems indeed have to their everyday lives. I argue that improvements in communication and engagement with local communities as well as fostering an environmental ethic can significantly improve wetland restoration and management efforts.

Fresh Kills in Staten Island, NY was wetland habitat that was valued so low that is was opened as a landfill in 1948 to be a receptacle for New York City’s garbage and became one of the world’s largest dumps. Fresh Kills Landfill was closed by Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001 and the site is currently undergoing restoration. This work includes restoring 360 acres of wetlands and  reclaiming 1,000 acres of higher elevated areas previously altered by landfill operations as grasslands (also an important carbon sink) to transform the area into “an extraordinary 2,200 acre urban park that will be a model for sustainable waterfront land reclamation, a source of pride for Staten Island and New York City, and a gift of open space for generations to come” (https://freshkillspark.org/). This is a really beautiful and, for me, emotional “ugly duckling story” and may serve as an inspiration for other potential ecological restoration and reclamation projects which will be so important for coastal resiliency, carbon sequestration, climate change, and our future.

Garbage scows bring solid waste to Plant #2 at Fresh Kills Landfill, 1973.
Chester Higgins, Jr. – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
https://freshkillspark.org/blog/wetland-restoration-freshkills-park
(Photo: Alex MacLean)

Public education and outreach campaigns are valuable for cultivating community engagement with wetland protection, management, and restoration efforts but importantly need to focus on creating a dialogue and participation between scientists, government, and the public. Communities especially need to be persuaded that a series of incremental actions and behavior changes that they are indeed themselves capable of carrying out has the potential to accomplish significant changes to our coastal wetland ecosystems. The incorporation of in-field education and volunteer activities as well as recreational opportunities is also essential to create a sense of place and can very often, in turn, bring a sense of care to the environment. In these ways new frameworks for environmental stewardship could be better put into action both on the ground within local communities and at broader national and international socio-ecological levels.

A letter to the Governor urging for increased wetland protection and restoration funding to support coastal resiliency

Dear Governor Andrew M. Cuomo,

I am writing to express my strong encouragement for New York State to specifically direct funding to tidal wetland protection and restoration initiatives to support coastal resiliency, or the defense against extreme weather events which are becoming more frequent and exacerbated by climate change and sea level rise. As you know, New York contains five estuaries which are managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in cooperation with other state, local, and federal government agencies. Tidal marshes within New York’s estuarine areas are not only some of the most productive habitats in the world, supporting numerous species of finfish, shellfish, terrestrial wildlife, and avian species, they are also vital for improving water quality by filtering stormwater runoff and metabolizing excess nutrients. This ecological service is critical for clarifying the water and creating more suitable conditions for natural resource and commodity production and supporting the State’s economically important commercial and recreational estuary-related industries such as the fishing and tourism.

Osprey with a fish. By: George Gentry, USFWS

Another significant ecosystem service that tidal wetlands provide is coastal resiliency in the face of impending climate change and sea level rise. Healthy functioning tidal marshes can protect public health and infrastructure by providing natural resistance to storms and flooding through rainwater absorption and protecting shorelines from erosion by buffering wave action and sediment capture. So coastal wetlands are a critical line of defense against extreme weather events which are becoming more frequent and exacerbated by global climate change and sea level rise trends. These environments also play an important role in the global carbon cycle due to their ability to act as a carbon sink by accumulating and sequestering carbon dioxide in vegetation and soil organic matter. Tidal wetland carbon sequestration abilities may be significant in relation to the urgency to reduce global carbon footprints contributing to warming and climate change.

Although coastal wetlands are economically and ecologically invaluable to the State of New York, many of these areas have become severely degraded to point where the ecosystem services they provide are compromised. Historically, a number of anthropogenic stressors during the last century have had major impacts to tidal wetlands in New York. Public nuisance and health concerns about marsh mosquito populations during the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s led to the promotion of the historical practice of grid-ditching existing wetlands. Filling of low-lying lands for residential and commercial uses as well as the construction of roads, bridges, and canals has led to severe wetland acreage loss. And cross-continental travel and trading, induced the proliferation of non-native plant species which effectively displace diverse native vegetation and compromise the integrity of tidal wetland ecosystems.

Smith Point Park, Shirley, New York. Looking South. Photo taken by Suffolk County Vector Control.

Currently New York’s most densely populated communities are in close proximity to coastal wetlands and have caused degradation of these environments due mainly to urbanization. Excess nitrogen inputs and other pollutants to New York’s coastal estuarine systems from human land uses generally originate from fertilizers for agriculture, commercial, and residential applications; stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflow discharges; and antiquated cesspool and septic systems. These anthropogenic stressors from terrestrial land uses affect tidal wetland functioning and compound the vulnerability to coastal ecosystems and communities in the context of impending climate change and sea level rise.

With sea levels rising and increasing storm intensity and frequency, New York’s coastal communities need to be better prepared for future climate related scenarios. Public health and safety, reduced risk of structural and non-structural damage, and improved recovery plans should be at the forefront in resiliency planning. But protection and restoration of the natural estuarine environment and its ability to mitigate storm damages should also be of highest priority. For these reasons, I strongly urge you to make adequate funding available for tidal wetland protection and restoration to support the coastal resiliency of New York.

Sincerely,

Jennifer McGivern

Senior Environmental Analyst and Environmental Advocate

Cc:       NYSDEC Commissioner Basil Seggo

            NYSDEC Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources