Tours offer better understanding of community issues around shoreline access, sea-level rise, and stormwater impact
The group of more than 40 people recently gathered on a narrow walkway at Barrington Town Beach drew quizzical looks from passersby.
Perhaps it was the large poster board of aerial views of Barrington shoreline
access points, or the sight of the town’s planning director talking into a
karaoke microphone about green infrastructure projects along the coastline.
The evening walk was not a nighttime field trip, but an
educational seminar putting a spotlight on shoreline issues of stormwater and
water quality, sea-level rise and shoreline access. However, these
presentations are not taking place in classrooms, they’re happening at the
water’s edge.
Hosted by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management
Council, Rhode Island Sea Grant, and the University of Rhode Island Coastal
Institute, these walking tours feature discussions of ongoing research and
bring together experts in shoreline processes, resource economics, and the law.
To date, walking tours have been held in Charlestown, Bristol, Barrington and
Westerly. More walks are planned for 2025.
Last month’s King Tide showed what future flood impact could look like in Rhode Island. Waterfront residents can help track shoreline change by participating in the MyCoast program, uploading neighborhood photos for analysis.
Sea Grant staff say that the walking tours spotlight
projects taking place in towns across the state at the water’s edge. Each tour
invites local experts to speak about community efforts at each site.
Nathan Vinhateiro, science director for the Coastal Institute,
is leading a Rhode Island Sea Grant-funded project called “SEA-C,” or Sustained
and Equitable Access to Rhode Island’s Coast in a Changing Climate and has
talked to residents about how communities will be impacted by sea-level rise or
from storms. With recent events in the South in the wake of Hurricane Helene,
it’s a topic that’s on the mind of many.
Vinhateiro says that sea level has risen a foot in Rhode
Island in the last century, during which the shoreline at some local beaches
has retreated 20 to 40 feet or more. And sea-level rise is accelerating. “The
forecast now is that we’re going to see another foot of sea-level rise in the
next 10 to 15 years, and close to two feet by 2050,” he says.
The Environmental Protection Agency also joined the most
recent program and shared how the agency is using public data to understand the
public’s visits to Rhode Island beaches and other shoreline points on
Narragansett Bay.
An environmental economist with the EPA’s Office of Research and Development at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus, Nate Merrill is using traditional methods like car counts and surveys to monitor beach access, as well as newer methods of cell phone data and aerial imagery, to understand visitation to beaches and the distances people travel to access the shore.
Put
together, this data can be overlaid on an existing vulnerability assessment to
create a risk metric, Merrill says. In addition to understanding which shore
sites are more heavily used, cell phone data indicates that shore visitors
cross socioeconomic and racial lines and groups.
“The next step is to understand the potential barriers to
accessing coastal sites, and ask whether climate change might impact different
populations differently,” says Emi Uchida, professor and chair of URI’s
Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics.
At the beach walks, CRMC staff also discuss laws and regulations pertaining to coastal property and shoreline access and encourage attendees to continue to track shoreline change by participating in MyCoast, sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and the URI Coastal Resources Center, with Save The Bay.
This is an effort to capture coastal flooding from King Tides and
storms with photographs uploaded to a portal website that collects and analyzes
photos that capture flood impact. These crowdsourced photos can create reports
that help government agencies, business owners, and residents to understand
shoreline change and make informed decisions.
To learn more about public access to the Rhode Island
shoreline, visit shoreline-ri.com or seagrant.gso.uri.edu or
email rhodeislandseagrant@gmail.com to
get updates on future shoreline access walks around the state.
