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.
Designers of the North Cypress Branch restoration project planned a series of constructed floodplain wetlands like this one to help slow the stream's flow. Photograph, Jeffrey Brainard
BOB HAHN JR. AND PATTY HINKS live only a few houses away from each other in Severna Park in Anne Arundel County. Both of their back yards share the same, expansive view of North Cypress Branch and the stream restoration project completed there in 2013. But they hold very different views about the project's results.
"I think it's a good thing if the research pans out and it helps the Bay," says Hahn on a recent sunny afternoon on his back lawn, overlooking the restored channel. He grew up nearby and has good memories of spending time down by the stream years before the restoration project. But he also likes the new version and the wider space that the project created.
"It's real nice here in the summertime," he says, "and I think it's improved my property value."
But to Hinks, the beauty and privacy of the forested creek were what drew her to buy her house 30 years ago. "Now it's the Great Lakes," she says, referring to the wide, shallow pools the restoration created. "I wish they would have experimented somewhere else, because there was a lot of acreage [of trees] that they had to take out here."
At the end of March, a new blog called On the Bay was launched as a service from Maryland Sea Grant and Chesapeake Quarterly magazine. Posts will include short essays, slide shows, podcasts, occasional videos, and frequent reporting on marine and environmental issues. From time to time we will carry guest-written posts contributed by those with Bay memories to share and by those engaged in studying, managing, or protecting the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem.
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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