![]() Researchers at the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER site have conducted studies of small-scale armoring in salt marshes. At NSF's Santa Barbara Coastal LTER site, studies of seawalls on open coast beaches have revealed significant ecological effects on marine species, including birds. Scientists at three LTER sites have been working on the ecological impact of coastal armoring. "The extent of that loss is related to the environmental setting, structure type and how far seaward and along the shore the structure extends." "The size and shape of these structures often result in the loss of intertidal habitats," said lead author Jenny Dugan, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The type of armoring structure varies widely according to the environmental setting, ranging from huge seawalls and revetments along the wave-exposed open coast to smaller bulkheads and human-designed oyster reefs in tidal marshes and estuaries. With some 40 percent of the nation's human population living in coastal counties, Garrison noted that the study is very timely. "This is one of the first attempts to assess how engineering structures on beaches and other sedimentary environments affect the biota that inhabits these locations," said David Garrison, an LTER program director at NSF, which supported the research. The team's findings appear online this week in a paper in Estuaries and Coasts, and will be published this fall in a special issue of the journal. Now a study by marine scientists affiliated with three coastal sites in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network provides a key first step toward generalizing ecological responses to armoring in the widely diverse coastal settings where these structures are used. Recent research on the resulting ecological effects has largely been conducted in specific settings, making it difficult to generalize the results across ecosystems and structure types. Though these structures help protect communities against natural disasters, these "lines in the sand" limit the ability of the shoreline to respond to changes in sea level and other coastal processes. These are just two examples of how America's coasts - especially those with large urban populations - have been armored with human-made structures. At work even longer: the Galveston seawall, built after America's deadliest hurricane killed thousands in Texas in 1900. Find related stories on NSF's Long-Term Ecological Research Sites.įor nearly a century, the O'Shaughnessy seawall has held back the sand and seas of San Francisco's Ocean Beach. ![]()
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