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.
By John R. Wennersten
Chesapeake Book Company, 2008
IF THE ANACOSTIA is the nation's forgotten river, then John Wennersten is helping us to remember it.
Wennersten is the right man for the job. Author of books like The Oyster Wars and The Chesapeake Bay: An Environmental Biography, he has a knack for evoking the richness of Bay history.
The picture he paints for us of the Anacostia is not always pretty.
Out of a plantation culture that gave us leaders like George Washington, mansions like Mount Vernon, and a national capital at the confluence of the Potomac and the Anacostia, came other legacies. Slavery. Social and racial divides. Rampant land speculation and bankruptcy.
The Anacostia rises from this difficult and bloody past with a fascinating story to tell. There are grand dreams by Washington D.C.'s designer, Pierre L'Enfant, to make the city a great international port, using the Anacostia's deep channels. There are bold financial ventures and shady dealings, personal fortunes made and lost.
This story of the Anacostia is often one of degradation, of the ruined environmental health of the river and of the disenfranchised communities that have lived on its shores.
But Wennersten ends his book with currents of hope and an "Anacostia prayer." He sees that the grand dreams have not died after all, and he concludes that urban watersheds — even highly degraded ones — can be restored, if we only have the will.
Jack Greer
This book is available from commercial booksellers (see Barnes & Noble).
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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