Interesting business this.
It would have been great to hear exactly what went on in this meeting about managing and restoring barrier islands in the face of increased storm activity and rising sea levels due to global warming.
Could these scientists have beed talking about how to keep development away from barrier islands in the first place? Unlikely. That's probably not the best way to secure a National Science Foundation grant. Besides that it's too late for that. Maybe the discussions centered around managing what goes on around these islands which could affect how storms and global warming impact barrier islands. Think about the Army Corps of Engineers dredging practices around Dauphin Island, AL, for instance. But could other processes such as shipping, drilling for oil, open loop LNG terminals or possibly even artificial reefs have an effect? Or possibly they are discussing doing something with the islands themselves which could harden them against the elements. Who knows. Unfortunately that information isn't available.
In the middle of an oversized conference room in the IP Hotel & Casino, 10 coastal scientists from across the country met this week to consider a strategy for managing North America's barrier islands.
To the sounds of slot machines ringing through the conference room walls, the group hammered out the beginnings of a proposal that would seek funding from the National Science Foundation to study a sample of Gulf and Atlantic seaboard islands.
"We are thinking about the recovery and regeneration idea here," said William Smith, a plant ecologist form Wake Forest University. "We are even getting into the science fiction ideas of how to stabilize transient, dynamic islands."
The project has taken on a sense of urgency in the area hit by the hurricanes of 2005. Greg Carter, a geospatial scientist at Southern Miss, said that initial estimates show that small barrier islands lost as much as 70 percent of their land and 60 percent of their plant cover. Larger islands lost around 10 percent of both.
Beyond the impact of major hurricanes, the group is also looking to plan for an impending sea level rise associated with global climate change.
Researchers nominated a few islands that would be good to investigate:
- The Chandeleur Islands
- The barrier islands south of Panama City, Fla.
- Perdido Key, Fla.
- Mustang Island, Texas
- Jekyll Island, Ga.
- Bald Head Island, N.C.
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