As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
LIGHT HEADING FOR THE BOTTOM of the Bay gets lost in two ways, not counting shading. It gets scattered or it gets absorbed.
Scattering. When light hits water filled with fine inorganic sediment, it bounces around (see figure below left). Some light will eventually get to the bottom, though greatly reduced or "attenuated."
Absorption. When light hits an algae cell, much of it gets absorbed (see figure above right). Phytoplankton are great absorbers of light — in a very real way, they "feed" on light. Larry Sanford and Charles Gallegos are reaching between their disciplines to discover the ways in which the inorganic and organic interact to create the turbidity we now see in the Chesapeake Bay. To learn more about light and turbidity, see Related Links.
The image on the left, captured on video by researcher Larry Sanford, shows fine grains of sediment and flocculants — aggregations made up of many thousands of smaller particles. The image on the right, of the diatom
Asterionella glacialis, is one of dozens of phytoplankton species found in the Bay. Diatom image by Sharyn Hedrick, courtesy of the SERC Phytoplankton Lab.
As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
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