“Armored” shorelines such as bulkheads offer less protection against big storms than people think. Gittman’s study confirmed what many experts had begun to suspect. Although the storm initially reduced the density of their vegetation by more than a third, a year later the greenery had bounced back and was as thick as ever in many cases. The marshes, which extended 10 to 40 meters from the shore, had lost no sediment or elevation from Irene. Yet none of the natural marsh shorelines were impaired.

The walls, typically concrete and about two meters high, are the standard homeowner defense against the sea in many parts of the country. Along the hard-hit shorelines, three quarters of the bulkheads were damaged. “So much policy and management is being made without the underlying science.” She decided to make shorelines her specialty.

“The more I researched, the more I realized that we just don’t know very much,” she explains. Navy on a shoreline-stabilization project and had been shocked to discover how little information existed on coastal resilience. Gittman had worked as an environmental consultant for the U.S. Gittman decided to survey the affected areas. The storm dumped rain shin-high and hurled three-meter storm surges against the barrier island shores that faced the mainland, destroying roads and 1,100 homes.Īfter the storm, a young ecologist then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill named Rachel K. On August 27, 2011, Hurricane Irene crashed into North Carolina, eviscerating the Outer Banks.

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