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By Lisa Hayden
At the end of Point Peter Road in eastern North Carolina, tire tracks trail off into rutted peat soil and disappear into Pamlico Sound. A massive tree stump bobs offshore, its limbs flailing as white-capped waves paw hungrily at the lip of the land.
These waves and the wind that drives them eat constantly into the swampy, coastal lowlands of North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, pushing salt water into inland waterways and over farm fields. Here on the coast of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge (ARNWR) — just west of the Outer Banks — is visible evidence of sea level rise caused by global warming, according to scientists.
And it is here in the waters of Pamlico Sound that The Nature Conservancy plans to submerge blocks of limestone and netted bags of shells to restore an oyster reef — just one of the nature-based adaptation strategies the Conservancy supports for building resilience to climate change in the area.
From Reefs to Soil, From Forests to Living Shorelines
“We have done two other successful oyster reef projects in the area,” says Aaron McCall, a Conservancy steward for the Northeast Region, “but this one will have a dual purpose: to demonstrate how reefs can buffer shorelines from storm surge and erosion while also creating new habitat for marine life.”
From the barrier islands of the Outer Banks — constantly reshaped by storms and high tides — to the Atlantic-white-cedar swamps and maritime forests rooted in ever-saltier water, The Nature Conservancy’s Banks & Sounds region, located on the Albemarle-Pamlico sound, is expected to undergo great changes by 2100.
Some models predict the area will lose as much as 1 million acres to rising sea levels in the next 100 years.
“The Albemarle-Pamlico landscape is vast, and even without climate change there are many conservation challenges,” says Jeff DeBlieu, a Conservancy climate change network leader. ”But with climate change, it’s like being dealt a second hand of cards in the middle of the game.
"We have to have a better understanding how the new hand meshes with and affects the old — and vice versa — how rising seas, changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and other forces will alter the landscape and how species and habitats will be affected as salt water mixes with freshwater further inland.”
Other climate change adaptation strategies being piloted and researched in the region include:
- Reforestation and hydrologic restoration: Farmland adjacent to a Conservancy easement has been converted back to swamp forest by planting tree species including bald cypress, which can tolerate inundation when flooded.
- Protecting natural habitat inland and upland of conservation lands to facilitate movement of species and transition of living shorelines as sea level rises.
- Establishing a baseline for soil carbon and monitoring the effects of management tactics on carbon sequestration.
A Fragile and Changing Landscape
Home to black bear, otter, bobcat, mink, weasel, and even alligators, the ARNWR also hosts bald eagles, neotropical migrants such as the prothonotary warbler and a successful breeding colony of endangered red wolves established by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The refuge’s drowned cedar forests are among 540,000 protected acres in the region.
“In order to maintain the conservation gains already made, we need to anticipate how the landscape will evolve and prepare management strategies to help natural systems successfully adapt to new conditions,” says DeBlieu, who leads the Conservancy-sponsored Sea Level Rise Learning Network, launched in May 2008.
The network is intended to be a clearinghouse of information that will increase practitioners' expertise to create, apply, test and refine conservation strategies and potential policy solutions for dealing with sea level rise. Work to develop climate-resilient estuarine systems in regions such as the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula will be shared with conservation partners and coastal managers throughout the Conservancy from Long Island to the Pacific Islands and from Washington state to the Gulf of Mexico.
Residents See Change Happening
As local residents have observed over their lifetimes, the sea is slowly winning the climate change battle.
“I’ve seen 35 to 40 feet of Albemarle Sound washed away…where I used to go to the beach as a kid, there’s no beach any more,” says Alonzo Leary of Washington County. Leary was one of dozens of residents who came to listening sessions on sea level rise and population growth in North Carolina held during the summer of 2008.
The Albemarle-Pamlico Conservation & Communities Collaborative (AP3C) — a coalition that includes The Nature Conservancy — co-hosted the forums with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program.
The sessions began a community conversation about how citizens can learn about and prepare for rising seas that threaten their environment and economy based on tourism, fishing and farming. Residents at a July 22 Columbia meeting listed the following observed changes:
- Some pocosin (upland swamps with acidic, peaty soil) is turning to marsh
- Canals are getting wider
- Rivers are more salty
- Temperatures have increased and rainfall has decreased over residents’ lifetimes
- Jellyfish are found in inland waterways
- More shrimp are being caught in the inland estuary zone during high salinity.
Ditches Carve and Drain the Lowlands
Along the refuge’s logging roads, as fill was dug to lay the roadbed, a ditch network was created to drain the land for farming. These interconnected ditches accelerate the movement of salt water inland.
The Conservancy is measuring the salinity of these ditches and other waterways and trying to balance the needs of farmers for flood control while working to restore natural water flow. The Conservancy and its partners are installing “flap gates” in the ditches to keep salt water off the mainland while allowing pulses of fresh water to flow out off the fields.
“We are losing farmland. It’s a gradual, creeping thing,” says Mac Gibbs, agricultural extension agent for Hyde County. "In a dry year like 2008, spots begin to appear in the fields where salt eats away at the soil," added Gibbs, 57, who grew up in Engelhard.
"When I was a boy, all this land was farm," he says. "Now, it’s marsh.”
Lisa Hayden is a project information manager for the Climate Change Campaign Priority.
Nature picture credits Erika Nortemann (Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge); Erika Nortemann (Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge).
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