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Come High Water: Sea Level Rise and Chesapeake

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Come High Water: Sea Level Rise and Chesapeake CHESAPEAKE QUARTERLYMARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 13, NUMBERS 2 & 3 ComeCome HighHigh WaterWater SeaSea LevelLevel RiseRise andand ChesapeakeChesapeake BayBay contents Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 Reckoning The Rising: Why Sea Level 14 The Future of Blackwater Is Increasing Can humans help wetlands survive Seas are rising in the the rising seas? issue of our magazine 4 The Antarctic Connection The Bay feels the toll of melting ice The Response: How People and other global changes. Are Adapting 8 As the Land Sinks 18 When Sandy Came to Crisfield Geologic shifts worsen the impacts The flooding of Crisfield surprised of sea level rise. forecasters and first responders. The Costs: Effects on 23 Washington, D.C., Floodgates People and the Land Can engineers keep storm surges away from the nation’s monuments? 10 Snapshots from the Edge For More on Sea Level Rise In low-lying Dorchester and Somerset counties, residents can see 28 References and Tools the effects of rising seas today. Links to reports and web pages. More Stories and Information Online The web version of this special issue of our magazine has a number of online-only stories about sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay region. hen European settlers put You can read summaries of these articles on pages 9, 17, and 27. To read the entire issue online, scan the QR code at right or visit down roots around this www.chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel Westuary in the 1600s, many likely didn’t recognize how changeable the Chesapeake Bay could be. They thought that the islands and CHESAPEAKE QUARTERLY October 2014 curving shorelines had always been here, Chesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environmental, and cultural issues relevant to the Chesapeake Bay and its ready to provide an enduring home. But watershed. The magazine is produced and funded by the Maryland Sea Grant College. geological evidence tells a different story. The Maryland Sea Grant College program is led by Director Fredrika Moser and receives support from the Global warmings and coolings over National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin is tration and the state of Maryland. Editors, Michael W. Fincham and the millennia have brought the birth and Jeffrey Brainard; Science Writer, Daniel Strain; Production Editor and Art Director, Sandy Rodgers. This expanded decline of multiple Chesapeake Bays. issue, including print and additional content online, was written in collaboration with Bay Journal, a newspaper that covers the Chesapeake Bay. Send items for the magazine to: When temperatures cooled, the great gla- Maryland Sea Grant College ciers and ice sheets expanded and sea 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300 level fell. When temperatures warmed, University System of Maryland the ice melted and sea level rose. As they College Park, Maryland 20740 301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780 rose, they drowned the valley of an e-mail: [email protected] ancient Susquehanna River, turning it www.mdsg.umd.edu / www.chesapeakequarterly.net into an estuary. About 10,000 years ago, rapidly rising ocean waters invaded the area near Norfolk and began to fill our Cover photo: This house on Holland Island in the Chesapeake Bay stood for more than a century. But the estuary’s water level rose, the island eroded, and the inhabitants left. In 2010, the house current Chesapeake Bay. The rate of rise — the last one left on the island — was swept into the Bay by encroaching waves. Pages 2 and 3: later slowed, and our estuary took its Maryland is experiencing one of the fastest rates of sea level rise in the nation. It also has some of the lowest-lying land, like this part of Dorchester County where Maple Dam Road has been flooded present shape only 3,000 years ago. during high tides. PHOTOS, DAVID HARP Today, the pace of sea level rise is with the Rising Chesapeake region, flooding Bay shores. This special examines by how much, and what we can do. increasing again. Tide gauges scattered up ous when big storms blow over. Higher special issue of our magazine. Why are and down the Mid-Atlantic coast show sea level brings taller storm surges and the oceans expanding and how high will that water levels here are already rising at more flooding. In October 2012, they go? What are the best scientific the fastest rates seen in thousands of years Hurricane Sandy pushed five feet of explanations? We also looked at the and among the fastest in the United water into Crisfield, Maryland. It was an effects on people, on Bayside residents States. The rise is forecast to accelerate in alarm call warning residents, builders, and who are seeing firsthand the loss of low- coming decades. Scientists have docu- government officials around the Bay to lying land. mented a variety of causes, many of them prepare for more high water in the future. The changes touch all of us, including driven mainly by human activities like Adding to the urgency was a scientific those who don’t live right on the Bay. emissions of greenhouse gases by indus- analysis completed in 2013. A team of sci- Taxpayers are underwriting flood insur- tries and vehicles around the world. entists projected that the sea level around ance programs. State and federal officials The annual rise in the Bay’s waters Maryland might rise by 1.4 feet by 2050. are planning sea walls and flood walls and seems small, about four millimeters a year, Those numbers shoot up to estimates of changes to roads and other infrastructure and its effects are not very obvious to the 3.7 to 5.7 feet by the end of the century. — all with the hope of holding back the occasional visitor. Look carefully, though, The toll from such a rise would be vast: water. and you can see some of them. Wood- scientists with the organization Climate An overriding, unanswered question: lands on the lower Eastern Shore have Central report that in Maryland alone, how much land, property, and heritage become marshlands dotted with dead more than 55,000 people live in homes can be preserved? And at what cost? white tree trunks, victims of salt water less than five feet above the local high- Additional articles and expanded flowing in from the Bay. In other places, tide line. This zone holds 41,000 homes information on the subject of sea level the changes are more obvious. Shorelines and $19.6 billion in property value. rise are available on a special website.To like those on Maryland’s Smith Island To examine these forecasts and their check them out, scan the QR code on and Virginia’s Tangier Island are steadily implications in depth, Chesapeake the opposite page, or visit the web at: eroding. Quarterly teamed up with the Bay Journal www.chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel. The changes are even more conspicu- newspaper to produce the articles in this — The Editors Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 3 THE RISING: THE ANTARCTIC Why Sea Level CONNECTION Is Increasing New research shows that polar ice sheets could become a big contributor to sea level rise Daniel Strain hen Ron Anderson was a around the Delmarva Peninsula for as teenager in the 1970s, he long as humans have lived here. But now, W liked to watch the sun set sea level rise is speeding up this give and over Benoni Point. The spit of land sat take between land and water. As water about a mile west of Oxford, Maryland, levels climb around towns like Oxford, over the Tred Avon River. Even then, waves reach farther and farther inland, Sea level rise is a global there wasn’t much to it. “It was just this altering the landscape and posing risks to phenomenon, but one that can little point of land with just these big people. affect life around the Chesapeake pine trees and nothing else,” says After Tropical Storm Isabel swept Bay in many different ways. Anderson, who grew up in Easton, not through the region in 2003, for instance, far from Oxford on Maryland’s Eastern the flooding was so bad that Anderson Scientists estimate that this Shore. and members of his fire company rode region’s rate of sea level rise will Today, there’s almost nothing left of small powerboats down streets to aid accelerate. They have also Benoni Point. Over the decades, waves stranded residents. investigated the causes: ice sheets carved away at the land, and rising waters Sea level is rising around the world, a around the world are melting killed off the pine trees, leaving only a trend scientists have attributed to climate small sandy island behind. change. Now, new observations are show- and land surfaces around the Anderson is an aquatic toxicologist at ing that levels on the Mid-Atlantic coast Chesapeake are sinking. What the Wye Research and Education Center, may be climbing at some of the fastest can we expect in the future? a University of Maryland facility near rates seen in the United States. A number Queenstown. The 55-year-old now lives of factors are responsible for this rise in in Oxford and is a member of the town’s water around the Chesapeake Bay. volunteer fire company. Stories like his Emerging research suggests that one of are common up and down the Eastern the biggest contributors to local sea level Shore. rise will come from what may seem an “Everyone who lives here has seen unlikely place: Antarctica. areas go back to the sea,” he says, “or put “There are some pretty stark differ- up bulkheads where they didn’t have to ences that you see if you compare the sea 40 years ago.” level rise at a place like Baltimore to, say, To be sure, the Bay has eroded land Juneau, Alaska,” says John Boon, a physi- PHOTO, DAVID HARP Ice loss proceeds at a staggering rate along the front of Thwaites Glacier (pictured here in 2012), part of the rapidly melting Amundsen Sea sector of Antarctica (map below).
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