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How did Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael Impact Living Shorelines? Read Part I of the Living Storm Protection Series Part II: Monitoring the Performance and Resilience of Marsh Sill Living Shorelines

How Did Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael Impact Living Shorelines?

The border between North Carolina and Virginia - a line that runs from east to west – seems logical when viewed on a map. But this straight line also divides five river basins, three of which – the Pasquotank, Roanoke, and Chowan - flow into Albemarle Sound. While a state border doesn’t stop the flow of water, it does complicate efforts to coordinate what happens upstream, in Virginia, with the downstream health of North Carolina’s estuaries and sounds.

In 2016, NC Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management (DCM) commenced a five-year project to create a comprehensive resilience-building guide or online portal for coastal North Carolina.

The ebb and flow of water guides the rhythms of the natural world. Rivers and creeks swell with spring rainfall, life blooming along their banks. Small streams become inhospitable channels of rock and sand during the hot months of summer. Fall then brings the threat of hurricanes, which can turn waterways into raging torrents that sweep pollutants, sediment, and detritus far downstream.

Republished with author's permission from The First Furrow blog on October 16th, 2017 “I saw drought devastation in nine states. I talked with families who had lost their wheat crop, lost their corn crop, lost their livestock, lost the water in their well, lost their garden and come through to the end of the summer without one dollar of cash resources, facing a winter without feed or food — facing a planting season without seed to put in the ground.” – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

How the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative Selects Ecosystem Indicators for the Southeast A mission and a vision