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| Water covered: During high tide Aug. 30, a truck passed on the road from Ewell to Rhodes Point, two of the three hamlets on
Smith Island in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. Andy Nelson - staff |
In Maryland, sea slowly claims a historic island
With water levels in the Chesapeake Bay rising an inch per decade, Smith Island has lost more than 3,200 of its 11,000 acres over the past 150 years.
from the November 15, 2007 edition
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Tylerton, together with Ewell and Rhodes Point are the three hamlets where people live on Smith Island. The island has lost more than 3,200 of its 11,000 acres to the sea over the past 150 years. Of the remaining land, about 900 acres is habitable. The population has dwindled from a high of more than 800 in the early 1900s to about 250 today.
Evans may see the past as he cruises by the long-abandoned land of his boyhood home, but scientists who study sea-level rise are more likely to see the future of the Chesapeake Bay.
More than 1,000 square miles of shoreline are less than three feet above sea level, making the region one of the most vulnerable in the United States to future climate-change-induced sea-level rise and increased storm surges from weather events like hurricanes.
Erosion is eating away at the Chesapeake shoreline at the rate of 580 acres per year, and saltwater intrusion has wreaked havoc with wetlands and agricultural land. Bob Fitzgerald, soil conservation board chairman for Somerset County, which includes Smith Island, has seen land once under cultivation slowly convert to marsh and then open water.
"The acceleration over the past 10 to 15 years is unbelievable," Mr. Fitzgerald says. He figures that about 5 percent of the more than 140,000 acres of farmland in Somerset County has been lost to the bay in that time.
Holding back the bay everywhere is impossible. Bulkheads and revetments are a common sight. With miles of water to blow over, winds create powerful waves. In many places, these traditional approaches help to stop the onslaught.
The Maryland Eastern Shore Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC&D) is trying another approach. It's working with landowners to construct "living shorelines" to reverse the loss of land and re-create native habitat.
'Living shorelines' help stop erosion
"Living shorelines are all about creating marsh," says Bhaskaran Subramanian, natural sciences manager for RC&D. "If you create marsh, that is one of the most potent ways of stopping erosion."
Creating a living shoreline involves building a stone barrier, backfilling the area with sand, planting marsh grasses, and then letting nature take over.
Graham Donaldson, a Centreville, Md., resident, contacted RC&D after nearly 40 feet of his backyard washed away. He was beginning to wonder how long it would be until the remaining 60 feet behind his house slipped into the water.
His living shoreline project took nearly a year to complete, but Mr. Donaldson, a former agriculture official with the World Bank, is convinced that he made the right decision. The marsh has flourished. The one-third acre of new habitat has become home to crabs, fish, and birds.
"It's aesthetically pleasing; it's biologically very successful, which for a gardener is a reward; and it's environmentally very effective," Donaldson says.
For more on the Chesapeake Bay's rising sea levels visit www.csmonitor.com/slideshows/2007/rising_chesapeake
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