North Carolina’s salt marshes face multiple threats

North Carolina’s 220,000 acres of salt marshes face multiple threats to their important role in climate protection and ecosystem health, from rising seas and saltwater intrusion to more frequent and intense storms.

To address the challenges, the North Carolina Coastal Federation has released a five-year action plan aimed at protecting and restoring the habitat.

Jacob Boyd, the federation’s salt marshes program director, said there is an urgent need to find ways to ensure the salt marshes are there for the next generation.

“Ecosystem resilience, community resilience and climate change really go hand in hand,” Boyd explains. “Because if we can protect and conserve some of these salt marshes and make those ecosystems more resilient, that will have an impact on resilience and benefits for local communities, flood protection and all the other benefits that salt marshes provide.”

The plan outlined several conservation strategies, including promoting living shorelines instead of bulkheads, restoring marsh heights and sediments, and conservation efforts to enable marsh migration. The plan is part of the larger South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, an initiative spanning the coastline from North Carolina to Northern Florida, with the goal of preserving and enhancing more than 1 million acres of salt marsh.

Sarah Spiegler, coastal resilience specialist for the North Carolina State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, emphasized the plan’s role in fostering collaboration among a variety of organizations, governments and academia. She noted that the “all hands on deck” approach should help address the environmental, social and economic challenges associated with salt marshes.

“Salt marshes and issues like climate change do not fall within one jurisdiction or stop at the county line or fall under the purview of just one agency,” Spiegler emphasized. “The fact that all these agencies and partners are going to work together, we’re fortunate that we can put our heads together here in North Carolina.”

Spiegler pointed out that the efforts build on others in the state, including Governor Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80 and the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan.

She added that the efforts will help bridge the gap between ecosystem resilience and community resilience in the face of climate change.

News Service of North Carolina