Breathing Life Into Florida's Receding Shorelines
Living Shorelines Provide a Green Solution to Chronic Coastal Erosion
Watching as the volunteers plant the last of the nursery-grown marsh grass, Savanna Barry reminisces about the extensive, yet rewarding path to the project’s completion.
Barry and her team used native plants and bags of recycled oyster shells to develop a living shoreline, a green infrastructure solution to erosion in certain areas of Florida’s coast.
“Coastal erosion is a really big problem in coastal communities,” said Barry , a UF/IFAS Florida Sea Grant regional specialized extension agent. Barry works out of the Nature Coast Biological Station (NCBS) in Cedar Key, a small island about 45 miles west of Gainesville on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“The area [Cedar Key] is gently sloping with a super shallow shoreline and pretty low elevations,” Barry said.
“Sea level rise is really affecting these areas and one of the ways is through accelerated erosion.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office for Coastal Management, over 75% of Florida’s population lives near the state’s coast. And as of 2022, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection estimates that almost 50% of Florida’s coastline is critically eroded.
Shifting the Tide
Coastlines are naturally dynamic, with sand constantly moving from place to place, building up in some places and leaving others devoid. Coastal erosion is a natural occurrence caused by tidal action, storms, and flooding. Humans have built on the coast expecting it to stay the same, not accounting for its energetic nature. To make matters worse, in recent decades, anthropogenic climate change has fueled extreme weather events and sea level rise, which are among the growing concerns for the sandy shores that are slowly being chipped away. And as we build along the coast, this development impedes the natural flow of sediment by disrupting currents that run parallel to the beach, often making erosion worse in those areas.
Coastal erosion is something that has been on the minds of scientists and resource managers since long before Barry’s time with the NCBS. But as soon as she was given the chance to help with a shoreline restoration project on Joe Rains Beach, she knew exactly what she had to do.
Bringing in the Reinforcements
By planting marsh grasses and other native plant species, reinforcing the shore with oyster bags, and installing a redeemed seawall, Barry and her team of contractors, researchers, and volunteers were able to resurrect Joe Rain Beach and make it a healthy and productive ecosystem for years to come.
“Having a lot of community advocates and people that understand what’s going on helps people not lose faith in the project,” Barry said.
“It builds a lasting group of people who will advocate for the project and future approaches.”
Through discarded restaurant oyster shells, fallen logs and tree trunks, and nursery-raised plants, living shorelines have many ways of breathing life back into the coastline. They can filter sediment and suspended particles from the water of passing currents, leaving the water clear and hospitable. By hosting many species of plants, living shorelines have also been found to be excellent at carbon sequestration, meaning they have the invaluable capability of capturing carbon from the water and air. The plants that are frequently part of salt marshes are also excellent sources of food and habitat for the many organisms that rely on them, whether they are permanent residents or visitors, such as migratory species of waterfowl. Acting as nurseries for many economically important fish, living shorelines also provide habitat and may help increase fish stocks, allowing the fish to be sustainably harvested.
Living shorelines can also be key in protecting coastal communities from sea level rise, storms, and beach erosion, serving as barriers between the wild ocean currents and the shore. Oyster reefs and salt marshes around the Florida coast have spent thousands of years adapting and developing resilience to hurricane level weather conditions. Living shorelines are meant to mimic these resilient systems to help withstand hurricane winds and storm surge.
Pioneering Green Infrastructure Solutions
Rachel Gittman remembers when living shorelines first started gaining popularity. She was working for the Navy developing an environmental assessment of a section of the Potomac River in North Carolina. Gittman was trying to investigate the environmental effects of a green infrastructure solution on the last remaining Navy property without a seawall.
The area had been experiencing erosion at a rapid rate, as well as pollution, due to the development of buildings and coastal infrastructure. Gittman says while conducting the environmental assessment, the Navy came up dry when looking for an alternative to hardened shoreline solutions. Wanting to protect what was left of the Potomac River’s shoreline, they began research for a green engineering strategy to implement.
However, neither living shorelines nor sea walls are the best at holding back storm surge, which is the most powerful source of destruction and erosion for coastal communities. Unless a sea wall is built incredibly high, its effectiveness against storm surge relies on whether the storm surge can go over the sea wall, which is a likely scenario in strong storms.
“A lot of the work we’ve done has shown that even a category one hurricane is overtopping and destroying sea walls in North Carolina,” said Gittman. “I think people have an inflated confidence in sea walls in terms of their protective capabilities.”
Living shorelines do not prevent storm surge, but they are more likely to survive it and repair themselves due to their resiliency. Natural coastal dynamics and boat traffic also contribute to erosion daily, but their effects are spread over a longer period and are not as dramatic as the aftermath of an extreme storm.
No One Size Fits All
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to living shorelines, and the exact design will depend largely on the geographic location of the site. Living shorelines composed of just vegetation are great for areas with low wave energy, but higher energy areas may require a hybrid model composed of natural structural features, such as oyster shells. If the location is too high energy, a living shoreline might not be a suitable answer to address the coastal erosion of that area. This can be shown on a spectrum going from softer “green” shoreline protection solutions to harder “gray” protection solutions.
Beautify Your Shoreline
While there are many public works projects focused on bringing living shoreline restoration to public beaches and coastlines, Barry believes the key to preserving the Nature Coast is through citizen involvement, particularly coastal homeowners with a beach front property. If one property owner has a sea wall, they may inadvertently be worsening erosion on their neighbor’s property. This is because traditional seawalls tend to reflect the wave action somewhere else. Living shorelines instead absorb wave energy.
This was the case for Jennifer McPeak’s property which was slowly eroding into the water after her neighbors installed armored sea walls. After being quoted $14,000 for a sea wall, McPeak was introduced to the idea of a small-scale living shoreline: a cheap, green, and beautiful solution to her chronic erosion problem. Now, she enjoys the company of the critters visiting her little beach which is located where the sea wall would have been.
"I think that what we really need is private homeowners to start requesting this from their contractors. That’s really where we need the people to adopt this more,” Barry said.
“I think that’s really what we need to take this field to the next level.”
Learn more
- About Living Shorelines in Florida
- About the Joe Rains Beach Living Shoreline Project
Sources
Savanna Barry is a Regional Specialized Extension Agent based in Cedar Key, FL at the UF/IFAS Nature Coast Biological Station. She specializes in coastal marine ecosystems, especially seagrass meadows. Her extension programs focus on sustainable coastal tourism, habitat restoration and enhancement, and coastal literacy and stewardship.
Through collaborations with fellow ecologists, social scientists, policymakers, and coastal engineers, Rachel Gittman explores the ecological and social drivers of coastal development and associated shoreline hardening, as well as identifies ecological, engineering, political, and socioeconomic barriers to the implementation of natural and nature-based alternatives.
About the Author
This story was produced by Patricia Escobar Torres , a student environmental communicator with the UF Thompson Earth Systems Institute (TESI). TESI's mission is to advance communication and education about Earth systems science in a way that inspires Floridians to be effective stewards of our planet.
This story is part of TESI's student-produced Earth to Florida newsletter that curates the state’s environmental news and explains what’s going on, why it matters and what we can do about it.