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Compass issue 10
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Compass is a quarterly publication of the USDA Forest Service's Southern Research Station (SRS). As part of the Nation's largest forestry research organization -- USDA Forest Service Research and Development -- SRS serves 13 Southern States and beyond. The Station's 130 scienists work in more than 20 units located across the region at Federal laboratories, universites, and experimental forests.



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Issue 10

A Vulnerable Southeastern Coast

Climate change is already contributing to rising sea levels across the Earth, the result of warmer ocean temperatures and melting glaciers and ice fields. Recent studies show that across the globe, average sea level may rise as much as 21 to 56 inches by the year 2100.

Combined with other effects— hurricanes and storms, erosion, human population growth, and development—rising sea levels will bring definite changes to the southeastern Coastal Plain, impacting most of the human population of the Southeast, as well as terrestrial and aquatic animal and plant populations.

 

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The low elevation marshes and barrier islands of the southeastern Coastal Plain are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Already some gulf coast marshes are submerging because sediment is not accumulating fast enough to keep up with rising sea levels. In some areas, forests will decline due to the intrusion of saltwater, and estuary and aquatic plant communities are threatened by changes in both water salinity and depth.

Coastal managers will need to look at rising sea level effects when planning habitat restoration. City and county development planners should account for sea level rise in coastal development plans, discourage development in coastal hazard areas, enhance shoreline protection, and protect and restore wetlands and forests as natural buffers for the effects of inward moving shorelines.




One type of wildland-urban interface is the isolated interface, where second homes are scattered across remote areas.
Sea levels along the South Carolina coast have already begun to rise as a result of warming temperatures. (Photo by Zoë Hoyle, U.S. Forest Service)