Sea Level Rise

Swamps Salt Marshes

For many years, marshes were a misunderstood habitat. Historically,
The ocean is rising and swallowing all in its wake, and people saw marshes as breeding sites for mosquitoes and diseases, and
swamps are at the top of the menu for this macabre meal. Swamps are they were frequently drained and filled in for other purposes. We now
incredibly diverse and important ecosystems to the environment, know that coastal marshes are critical to the critical to the function of
especially in the deep south where the Bayou takes up a leading role in region ecosystem service, filtering nutrients and pollution from the water,
their environment. However New England is not safe from the rising protecting communities from rising sea levels and harsh storms,
ocean’s war on swamps. 2% of New Hampshire's land area and supporting commercially valuable fish breeding grounds, and providing
hundreds of thousands of acres of land in New England are made up of recreational opportunities. Salt marshes conserve biodiversity by
swamps, and their destruction would be catastrophic to their ecosystem. providing critical habitat for many organisms, protecting shorelines from
And the rising ocean isn't the only thing threatening our loyal estuaries, storms, and acting as natural pollution filters. Salt marshes are a blue
in Louisiana rising temperatures and falling oxygen have been killing carbon ecosystem because they act as carbon sinks, absorbing greenhouse
swamps faster than ever, mix that with 4 million barrels of oil from the gasses and helping to mitigate climate change. The contribution of salt
BP oil spill and you have a recipe for disaster. The growing risk of the marshes to our environment and work as a defense which can help us
New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin to repair work, economically, as the salt marshes serve as a natural source of defense and
including the raising of hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that does not require any money maintenance on it, these marshes
form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its furthermore prevent nearby flooding which minimizes the amount of
This is a map of the places in NE that will be
adjacent suburbs. With senator David Vitter plan, $250 billion would damage that nearby homes, businesses, infrastructure, or property that
underwater (NOAA). The light green area will be
be allocated for storm reconstruction, including $40 billion for levee underwater by the end of sea level rise the storm have caused.
repairs and ecosystem restoration NOAA, partners, and Rhode Island Senators Reed and Whitehouse
Ice caps melt, temperatures rise, droughts rage. This is what makes
oceans rise. Coasts have been the lifeline of human civilization since its gathered last month to celebrate the project's success and tour the
inception, and now they are threatening to wash us away like footprints completed first phase at Quonochontaug Pond in southern Rhode Island.
on a beach. In New England alone, we are looking at most of the major Partners hope to restore fish and wildlife habitat by elevating the sinking
cities, Boston, Hartford, Providence, and Portland, being submerged, marsh with a new layer of sediment. The project will also strengthen the
along with the entire state of Rhode Island, and most of Connecticut. local community's resilience to sea-level rise and coastal storms. The
However, this is still decades away, so why worry about climate change? restoration project will cost around 2.2 million.
It sounds like next generations problem to me. Well, the largest cities on
earth may not be submerged like the city of Atlantis, but the Kingdoms
of our estuaries are beginning to play through this Platonic tale. Oceans
are swallowing our wetlands, and it is up to us to solve this, because all
of our problems will not just wash away.

Rick Hague, Angel Lucario,

This is a graph of land loss in Louisiana due to Climate change over
Deanna Laurent
the last 100 years (Earth.org)