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By Peggy Chen, Duke + NCSSM Summer Internship Explore the dashboard yourself here, and if you would like to, we welcome anonymous feedback through this form. Sea level rise and saltwater intrusion (SWISLR) act together to collectively alter socio-ecological systems on coastlines. There’s a lot of work required of scientists and coastal residents to make solutions work – and even then, it’s an uphill battle to combat an issue with such an extensive scope of effects. This summer I worked in the Bernhardt Lab with Kiera O’Donnell and Heili Lowman helping with a SWISLR RCN project that addressed SWISLR solutions holistically. The overarching goal that guides this project is to quantify perceived and actual water quality risks due to SWISLR for rural coastal communities in North Carolina. This is invaluable to understanding and sharing the future actions residents in these vulnerable areas can take to safeguard themselves and their families from the threats of SWISLR. But before we can get started on testing water quality and guiding community discussions, we wondered: what has already been done to address coastal water quality threats? We were especially interested in how human infrastrucutre like septic and well water systems were at risk. These systems are hypothesised to be compromized with the rising saltwater but there is not a clear answer to how much water is too much water for these coastal systems. Scientists may be able to estimate an answer based on the literature they read or produce, but for informing on the ground solutions and actions this isn’t such an easy question to answer. 1. The SaltWatch DashboardOur first goal was to create an interactive dashboard using R. The focus of this project was science communication – ultimately, we want to empower coastal communities with a solution-centered tool. We started by compiling databases of literature, with an emphasis on stories and solutions that highlighted the amazing resilience of communities in the midst of extensive threats to their water quality and health. Just as we wanted the dashboard to be for anyone, regardless of their background in current environmental research, we decided to expand our scope beyond research articles. Our belief was that in searching beyond academic literature, we could find unexpected and undiscovered solutions that communities in need of solutions can find inspiring and useful. We filled two databases, one for solutions and one for stories, with news coverage, virtual webinars, policy proposals, podcast episodes, and other forms of media. Although neither was a comprehensive review of the material out there, it did represent many of the stories of communities on the coast. The stories and solutions were then added to an interactive map that allowed users to sort the stories by date, location, or even the type of source it came from. Even though the emphasis of our dashboard is on North Carolina, we found that work done in other states – and countries, too! We had an article from Bangladesh – could be helpful to communities navigating SWISLR-related changes. For example, the University of Arizona discussed a constructed wetland initiative to absorb wastewater from a nearby dairy farm. We weren’t able to find a similar project in North Carolina, so we decided to add this article to our database.  The solutions we took from our literature search was synthesized into categories that allowed users to sort by criteria like the duration, location, and type. We found a similar resource on the American Flood Coalition’s Flood Funding Finder which categorized flood relief programs by metrics similar to the way that we did. Just as SWISLR impacts social-ecological systems, the solutions we chose also approached the problem in ways that reflect the intersectional nature of the problems caused by this issue. In particular, solutions like implementing living shorelines we found to be compelling because it not only improves water quality, but also contributes to a plethora of benefits to fisheries, biodiversity, and recreation for residents. In this way, the solutions database encompasses the various facets through which communities can combat SWISLR.  2. Water Quality Analysis After exploring and reviewing many of the actions taken by communities in the coastal plain, I found myself wanting to look into the more technical side of the research. I knew how people are responding to this threat, but what are the numbers that can quantify the extent of this issue? While I didn’t have enough time to sample coastal water, I had a useful resource introduced to me by Heili Lowman: the United States Geological Survey (USGS) vast and extensive repository of nationwide water quality data. I focused on the National Water Information System (NWIS) specific conductance data, and conducted some exploratory data analysis on the numbers. I generated a few plots and graphs to give me an overview of what the data looks like. But, whether this data is complete and representative of North Carolina’s water quality will require further investigation. For instance, in generating scatterplots for several of the sites, some came back with only several data points – not enough to tell the full story. If we could find whether testing locations that have more measurements tend to cluster in certain areas, that could lead us to determine whether certain waterways were being tested more frequently or not frequent enough. The following map drove much displays all the USGS locations in North Carolina that measured specific conductance after 2000. However, the color scale on the right also told us how many measurements each site took. As you can see many sites are a light blue, meaning that very few measurments were taken there. If we focus on the sites that have a high amount of measurments, we will have a much more accurate characterization of the salinity in that area.  These are just preliminary findings, but we hope that other researchers have or will soon pick up on investigations that probe deeper not at the stories that data tells, but the stories of data itself. To anyone interested in exploring this further, we included links to datasets from the USGS, EPA, and the North Carolina Department of Water Resources on SaltWatch. 3. Takeaways In the coming months, this project will shift to sharing our dashboard with the coastal communities themselves! We received fruitful feedback from an array of stakeholders in the SWISLR field, and are excited to see this model of research communication delivered to a larger audience. By informing residents in North Carolina on what other people have done to fight SWISLR, we’re hoping for some engaging discussions about how we can collectively move forward to combat water quality threats in a way that suits the resources, goals, and values of each individual community.
We hope our work this summer also demonstrates the fascinating and imperative intersection of the social and environmental sciences. By both asking about people’s stories and resilience in the face of SWISLR and by quantifying coastal water quality, forming solutions will take more than just a single field of science to accomplish. Explore the dashboard yourself here, and if you would like to, we welcome anonymous feedback through this form.
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Over the summer many SWISLR RCN participants attended the SALT (Salinity-Affected Lands in Transition) Conference in Cambridge, Maryland, in June 2024. With approximately 200 attendees, this conference was a great opportunity to bring folks together around important issues related to working lands affected by saltwater intrusion. We learned about the current research through 8 curated sessions, a poster session, and two keynote talks. In the first Keynote, Dr. Emily Bernhardt discussed the possible futures that could take place if we can work together to untangle the complexities surrounding SWISLR. She stepped through what we know about SWISLR, what is currently happening to study SWISLR, and the new technology being used to combat SWISLR issues. In the second Keynote, Dr. Diana Seecharran provided a global perspective and discussed how the rice-based farmers in Guyana are reacting and adapting to the SWISLR problem. The other sessions covered topics on the environmental, social, and economic issues SWISLR is causing throughout the coastal plain. Throughout the SALT conference, the Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise (SWISLR) Research Coordination Network (funded by the National Science Foundation) invited the attendees to imagine the potential futures of our coastal plain and identify what stands in the way of accomplishing these futures. We invited SALT attendees to fill out our interactive “How do we face SWISLR?” board. Here they could identify the problems they face with SWISLR, what an ideal coastal future looks like, and the potential opportunities. People shared their thoughts on what should be done, what can be done, and what can’t be done in the face of the SWISLR problem. Following SALT, the all-hands SWISLR meeting followed up on these questions and more specifically asked people to envision their ideal coastal future. We started our SWISLR all-hands meeting by summarizing all the SWISLR issues we know about and have heard about during the SALT conference. When experts were asked to identify the SWISLR problem, many differing issues were raised, ranging from ecological and social vulnerabilities threatened by SWISLR hazards to the uncertainty of the future and what response is even possible. Some keywords continuously mentioned while envisioning coastal futures were access, collaboration, and adaptive. These keywords were used when describing new technology, discussing possible economic/policy structures, and creating spaces to live with nature/water instead of against it. The all-hands participants were then challenged to think of ways to work toward these futures. Overall, collaboration is needed to coordinate experiments, connect people with solutions, hold each other accountable, share ideas, and become more efficient with the time and funding currently available. More research and better data are also needed to make these envisioned futures a reality. The research and data needs mentioned were across various disciplines, like groundwater response, soil water salinity, spatial data, and policy reviews. Better data and more collaborated research can lead to better policy being implemented, restructuring the current funding systems, restructuring the power dynamics currently in place, and help people living with SWISLR accept that change is the way of life. After these discussions, the 7 SWISLR projects in attendance got together to work. Participants followed up on the project pitches from last year's all-hands meeting; discussing the feasibility of the proposed work, updating new members on what has or has not been completed, and discussing what still needs to be done for the project to succeed. During the working time, one project worked on data analysis, another began writing a grant for funding the proposed work, and another finished writing a paper. You can see all the amazing project updates here: SWISLR All Hands 2 Project Updates! Next year will be the final all-hands meeting, where we aim to summarize what we have learned, what remains unclear, and what to do next. As we move forward, we encourage everyone to leverage the connections and relationships built during the conference. These networks can be valuable in collaborating on writing proposals and forming teams that bring together diverse expertise and perspectives. By continuing to work together, we can drive progress and develop effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.
Increasing salinization is the reality for coastal landscapes worldwide. Saltwater travels over the land, under the ground, and through surface water channels. However, hydrologists have studied the pathways of over, under, and through separately, limiting the full understanding and prediction of where salt is delivered in coastal landscapes. Human modifications additionally alter these pathways and in turn, alter the delivery of salt into freshwater landscapes. Holistically studying the hydrology of SWISLR is needed where the pathways over land flow, underground, and through surface water channels are studied together with the alteration of human modifications included.
This group is writing a perspectives piece to present a conceptual framework that calls for this integrated study of water flow and human modifications. Multiple case studies will be highlighted in the paper as reasons to study SWISLR holistically and as potential ways to use the conceptual framework. The paper will wrap up by discussing the future of our coast and recommendations for studying SWISLR hydrology. In today’s webinar, a few potential case studies were presented. Greg Noe talked about the “Through” and the heavily modified Savannah River. Justine Neville presented a case study of saltwater intrusion into small man-made channels in southeast North Carolina due to flow control structures. Alex Manda showed us projects measuring the salinity of agriculture fields in Coastal North Carolina due to the connectivity of agriculture drainage canals. Lastly, Marcelo Ardón shared his experience with saltwater intrusion in the Albermarle-Pamlico Peninsula in coastal North Carolina in a restored forested wetland. Additional proposed case studies are Southern New England, the Eastern shore of Virginia, and the Gulf Coast. Torry Bend and Kiera O’Donnell talk through the Stories of Change project, from where it started to how it has evolved to be larger than the original pitch. The original pitch had an underlying goal of engaging with coastal stakeholders in a meaningful way. The team wanted to create a space where people could be open and honest about climate change while still being informed about potential risks and solutions of SWISLR. They found that stories were a potential way forward with this project. Stories can be a place to hold grief, they can be a safe way to share information, and they can be used to create idealized futures and situations. To start the webinar, everyone was asked “If you were to present the version of the future in the most idealistic terms, what does that look like?”  Kiera and her team of Duke students have worked through SWISLR-related papers that were associated with a social science discipline. They are working to uncover who is studying SWISLR within the social science sphere, where are SWISLR interviews and surveys taking place, how is SWISLR impacting coastal communities, and what are the means of response to SWISLR impacts. The past semester was all about extracting information from SWISLR social science research, and now the team at Duke is working on analyzing the data and synthesizing the information they worked to pull out of the literature. They specifically will be looking at what questions are being asked in these papers and surveying the surveyors to ask them what questions should be asked. To find out more about this project you can see their first semester findings described in this blog post: https://apnep.nc.gov/blog/2024/01/22/saltwater-intrusion-sea-level-rise.
Through engaging with community members, Torry has been able to create and collaborate on 4 different projects and has taken the original goal of co-creating stories of change to the next level. Torry found the original questions and goals laid out during the all-hands meeting were becoming stretched and changed based on who she was talking to and the timing of when people were able to talk. The first project is working with K-12 students to write and create resiliency fables to give the students power in their future and an outlet for their grief and worry surrounding climate change. The second project is creating a collective of people working in puppetry and climate change so as opportunities come up there is a network of people working in this sphere that can be connected to the project in question. The third project is making a documentary on farming in Princeville, a coastal North Carolina town. The farmer Torry is working with talked about their connection to the land, the changes they have made throughout their life, and the changes they will have to make in future SWISLR-induced farm fields. The last project is a short live puppet show on moving away from the coast with the intent to connect an art form to information. Although migration is a tough topic to talk about, the connection to art and puppetry is a creative way of softening some of the anxiety surrounding it. All these projects came out of the idea that stories can be a powerful tool to talk about anxieties surrounding climate change. We finished the webinar with a discussion on public spaces and factors that have facilitated safe spaces to share ideas and thoughts about climate change. You can watch the presentations and the discussion here. https://youtu.be/E924S_bvdBA For the December webinar we were joined by Henry Yeung and Dr. Justin Wright to talk about the many aspects of ghost forests. Henry Yeung is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, studying plants and climate change using remote sensing. Dr. Justin Wright is a plat ecologist interested in uncovering the causes of ecosystem patterns. Both are interested in ghost forests.
Henry has been able to create a fairly accurate model to predict where dead trees are located based on spectral imagery from the sky. He has also been able to identify the areas that are more difficult for the model to identify. With this accuracy, he has been able to apply the model across the entire eastern coast (Virginia to New Hampshire). Using the large area of tree mortality, Henry could start identifying trends in the data. Henry has been able to identify that mortality varies strongly with elevation but differs across regions. Most mortality happens below 10 meters of sea level and the Mid-Atlantic wetlands are experiencing substantial forest mortality. Specifically, the states of Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia are experiencing the most freshwater forest mortality. Using this model we have increased our understanding of U.S. east coast ghost forests, providing a method for other areas to do the same. Looking at ghost forests at these large scales provides us with generalizable information, however, it is potentially missing the landscape-specific changes that can cause increased or decreased forest mortality. Dr. Justin Wright has decided to create a team focused on understanding the history of places where we see these large swaths of ghost forests. In general, he has found that when researchers are trying to understand why land has been heavily impacted, our immediate thought is to the present - what are the species located there, what is the hydrology of the area, etc. But what we are seeing is the history of the landscape that is influencing trends present to this day. Therefore, a newly funded project to work with the Forest History Society will be compiling the history of coastal North Carolina which will highlight the history of the ghost forests that Henry is seeing from remote sensing. The big question now, is how do we scale up the history of landscapes impacted by SWISLR? Both projects are focused on ghost forests, and although they cover very different aspects of tree mortality, they are both focused on understanding the patterns of mortality and how we can potentially protect, or at least predict, the loss of our forested wetlands. Spencer Rhea and Alex Smith joined us to share updates on their SWISLR projects created at the All-Hands meeting this past May. Spencer started by sharing his project “S.T.E.W.P. - Salting the Earth with Purpose” (name yet to be finalized) focused on understanding how SWISLR affects carbon emissions in coastal wetlands, with a focus on how soil properties can mediate the response. Alex Smith followed up with the “G.Y.S.T.” project focused on how we can adapt ecosystem models to SWISLR field work going on and how field work can potentially be adapted to inform models. You can watch this recording posted in the SWISLR Seminars page.
As Spencer introduces his project, he shared with us that wetlands store a lot of carbon due in part to the soils that allow wetlands to hold onto the carbon for a long time. With global climate change these carbon stocks are under threat and many of our wetlands are disappearing under sea level rise. The effects of saltwater intrusion into wetlands and soils is variable and there are many different effects that can compound on each other. To gain a better understanding of SWISLR effects on soils he collected soil samples from other SWISLR RCN member’s research sites and compared the soil and chemical properties between salt exposed sites and protected sites. This project is still in the beginning stage and Spencer will investigate wetlands soils further through a “Common garden experiment” and a “Common substrate experiment”. Through this work Spencer wants to identify what soils are most resistant to SWISLR and welcomes other soil researchers to get involved in this soil examination! Alex further discusses the complexity of SWISLR impacts to ecosystems and explains how these complex interactions compounding on each other require complex and innovative models. To arrive at these innovative models we first need to understand the popular adaptable models available. Through a synthesis of adaptable terrestrial models Alex arrived at ELMs, specifically the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), a model that simulates coupled processes and interactions among water, energy, carbon, and nutrient cycles. However, the ELM does not include detailed hydrology, ecology, or biogeochemistry - all traits that we would need for modeling SWISLR. But, this model is adaptable and modules can be added to refine the model for SWISLR. Alex talks through the modules of FATES and PFLOTRAN and their pros and cons with modeling SWISLR. The current inclusion of coastal habitats in ELM, the adaptability of ELM through modules, and the simplicity in the structure of the model make a great case for why we should use ELM to model SWISLR. In addition, field studies could better inform these models. Therefore, Alex is completing a literature review of SWISLR field studies to identify what researchers are collecting and the traits that would be important to include in a model. Studies like G.Y.S.T. and S.T.E.W.P. are helping to inform our SWISLR RCN on how we are and how we should be collecting ecosystem disturbances due to SWISLR. As we, as researchers, continue to complete experiments and collect data, there should be a concerted effort to identify and abide by a standard set of methods. One of our partner networks, the Down East Resilience Network, hosted an event to remember hurricane Florence and to take a look at how prepared Down East North Carolina is for the next big event. The community conversations started with memories of where Down East was five years ago, asking the big questions of “were we ready then?” and “are we ready for the next one?” Community members shared their concerns with the chronic flooding they are facing now, highlighting the fact that if it floods on a sunny day it will be even worse during a storm. This event brought a mix of researchers, media, elected officials and community members together to listen and talk to one another. Members from our own SWISLR RCN were there to talk about ghost forests, a ghost forest sentinel site, the sunny day flooding project, and partnership opportunities. There were multiple panels and talks to share the changes that Down East is seeing, what the potential reasons behind these changes are, and how Down East is handling these changes. Local fishers spoke on the shifts in their fishing industry, Dr. Emily Bernhardt talked about the increase of ghost forests and what they mean, and Dr. Katherine Arnade and Dr. Chris Voss talked about sea level rise and flooding. These changes people are seeing in their surroundings give insight into the reality of living so close to the edge of the ocean. One community member said that the “beauty and abundance of water define our communities.”  SWISLR RCN member Erin Seekamp showing off the Down East sentinel site. The next big question was “now what?”, more specifically “are we really ready for the next one and what can we do now to prepare?” To start answering these questions, the second half of the event focused on the resilience of Down East’s infrastructure and personal risk mitigation. There were two panels asking representatives from NCDOT and NCDOI what the plan is for a more resilient Down East. These two sessions had many specific questions from the community all circling the topic of what can people do to protect their homes and families. Many highlighted the issues they have with drainage ditches not controlling the flow of water away from their homes. Instead, people are finding their yards flood through this modification that was originally created for draining water.
Participating in this conversation was very insightful and rewarding. It was interesting to hear from the whole system of a coastal area - the people living there, the researchers studying there, and the managers making decisions there. New members from this resilience network have now joined our SWISLR RCN to help bring this full systems thinking to the entire North American Coastal Plain. Chris Yeomans from the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, Jennifer Allen from Coastal Review, Kelly Garvy from lighthouse environment partners, and Isabella Thayer from NC State University. As sea level rises and saltwater intrusion grows worse, we need more collaboration and data sharing so we can move towards a resilient future smartly. Friday SWISLR webinars are happening again this school year! SWISLR Seminars will be once a month, each one focused on a project that came out of the SWISLR All-Hands meeting. Many people during the All-Hands meeting said that the SWISLR RCN can help their projects by providing connections to people or to data outside of their social network. Therefore, each project will have a chance throughout the school year to host a SWISLR Webinar and a discussion that will help further their project.
The Projects and their project leads:
For this first webinar each project got a chance to highlight what they proposed at the All-hands meeting and what has been accomplished since then. You can check out these pitches by watching the recording of this webinar on youtube. After each project lead, or project representative, introduced their project, we had breakout groups to further discuss what has been going on within the working groups. In these breakout groups people shared ideas and data sources. The S.T.E.W.P. project now has an additional soil sampling site, Stories of Change has some more people to talk to about the changes they are observing, and the SWISLR RCN has some new members joining the list serv! I am looking forward to hearing more about these projects in the coming months, and can’t wait to see what connections grow from them. At the end of last month we had our first SWISLR all-hands meeting! Many exciting projects, working groups, and connections were created at this event. The group of people that were able to join describe our time at Camp Don Lee the best:  "A bunch of SWISLR enthusiasts all met up at a coastal summer camp and ate s’mores and kayaked. We played games and shared our stories. We renewed our excitement for science. We saw dolphins off the pier. We saw the ghost trees of the ghost forests. We talked out complex problems. We made new connections and Karen from Harker’s island made me cry. We came up with some really exciting new projects. We worked really hard. We learned about the struggles of local communities. We met some amazing artists. We sparked new ideas. We heard emotional stories and shared stories of our own. We started projects we will keep on working on together. We thought about salt in a lot of different places and created a SWISLR community! We embraced inter-disciplinary work and we made plans to continue this work into the future. We shared fun personal stories about fieldwork around the campfire. Enjoyed nerding out and wish there was more archery. We learned about the environmental conditions at Camp Don Lee where we were staying. Baby Quinn put her toes in the water and the sand for the first time. And it was awesome!"  A commonality that we all share is data – if you don’t collect your own data you often use publicly available data to find information through national or regional datasets. Working with big publicly available data has introduced the need for some guiding principles in order to protect sensitive data and allow access to everyone equitably. One such set of principles are the FAIR data principles. This acronym stands for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable and these guidelines put emphasis on enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use the data, in addition to supporting its reuse by individuals. Without these pieces it is hard for data reuse to happen. Reuse is important in research because many people rely on syntheses, regional generalization, and comparing methods or results. Reuse and access is also important to community members and practitioners so they can make decisions using the best data possible. Specifically with SWISLR, FAIR data practices (https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/) are necessary if we want to make general statements of the issues SWISLR causes. There are really hard to solve problems happening right now, and in order to come up with resilient solutions, it is more beneficial if we can use data across regions and disciplines.
Organizations such as NSF, NASA, and journals (e.g. AGU) are creating policies where researchers are required to share their data and make the data publicly available in data repositories. There is a large landscape of data repositories available on the web that can make it harder to find the source of data you are looking for. Although they are helpful for housing data and making them publicly available, the number of repositories available can make it harder to know where to look for the data you are trying to find. There are efforts to combine these repositories as data atlases that constrain the geography or google data that houses the links to these data sources. However, they do not cover the full depth of data available on the web. Given this, Dr. Anna Braswell has asked – “How can we make data more discoverable?” One way is that we can create a centralized data repository for all data like NOAA’s National centers for environmental information (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/) or the European Marine Observation and Data Network (https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en). However, this requires a lot of time, space, and money that is not readily available. Another option is to require improvements to the information included with the open data so it can be more findable for systems like google data that scrape the web for you when you search. But this takes a lot of buy in from all the repositories housing data and researchers who publish their data. Although this is doable, it will take time. Finally, one option forward is to create a community around data. To achieve this, Dr. Braswell is creating a site where people can create posts about data they use and post questions they have about data availability and useability: https://copecomet.github.io/Coastal-Data/. The goal of this data curation service is to create a community around data and help improve the ways in which we use and find data. |
AuthorsKiera O'Donnell:[email protected] Archives
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