MAC URISA 2016

Unfortunately, this session has been cancelled.

Natural marsh systems are highly effective at providing resiliency by reducing storm surge and nuisance flooding. In addition they provide a number of other ecosystem services, such as fish and wildlife habitat and improving water quality. These ecosystems are being lost due to human development and natural erosional forces (winds, waves, storms, etc.). Living shorelines are a coastal restoration technique that prevents marsh erosion while maintaining ecosystem services. The goal of this project was to identify highly eroding shorelines in an effort to systematically target where living shorelines are needed. This project also identified what types of shorelines are most sensitive to erosion. Good Luck Point, within New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay was chosen as the study area. NOAA’s Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) was used to identify and map shoreline types. “Developed” shorelines were added to the ESI descriptions to describe natural shorelines adjacent to hardened shorelines. These shorelines Historic shorelines (1932, 1940, 1951, 1961, 1977, 2002 and 2012) were digitized from a georeferenced aerial photography and existing GIS imagery. USGS’s Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) was used to calculate the Linear Regression Rate (LRR) for each shoreline type (excluding hardened shorelines). The data was analyzed in R statistical software. A Kruskal-Wallis test followed by a Dunn’s test was performed to examine differences in LRR between shoreline types. The results suggest that most Developed Vegetated Beaches and Vegetated Beaches have eroding shorelines. Vegetated shorelines account for the highest erosion rates (this may be due to Vegetated shorelines accounting for more than two-thirds of the shoreline types). Higher erosion also appears to occur along exposed shorelines. Future studies will incorporate an analysis of wave energy along the shore to determine how much exposure accounts for shoreline loss.