Cape Jourimain is a National Wildlife Area that is found along the Northumberland Strait in southeast New-Brunswick. This beautiful coastal area includes sand dunes, beaches, freshwater wetlands, brackish marshes and salt marshes.
Salt marshes have a natural ability to shift with rising sea levels, absorb and disperse intense wave energy, decrese erosion and create a natural buffer area between land and sea. Unfortunately, salt marshes along the Northumberland Strait have been impacted by development for decades. So, it is critical to restore and protect them and allow space for salt marshes to migrate inland with sea level rise. These are reasons why the National Wildlife Area is important.
Climate change is warming the planet leading to thermal expansion of water molecules in the oceans and melting ice caps and glaciers resulting in sea level rise. In the Maritimes sea level is increased by subsidence, or the sinking of coastal lands. Lands are sinking here because a huge heavy glacier used to cover Canada but since it began retreating, the edges of the continent have begun to sink (just like when you jump on a bed and the edges of the mattress move up and down). Subsidence contributes 5-10% to the projected relative sea-level change by 2100 and makes our region more vulnerable to sea level rise, but salt marshes and nature-based approaches can help us adapt.
Look for sea level rise markers along one of the trails near the salt marsh at the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre to help answer the questions below. The signs show a historic coastal flood level from 2010 and what the same storm could look like in 2100 with sea level rise.
Here are your logging questions:
1. What do you think could happen to the highway and nature trails if the salt marsh wasn't there?
2. Look at the 2100 marker on the sea level rise signs and look around the site; what could flood in a storm at the end of the century?
3. What other nature-based approaches could help protect the trails, the highway and the Nature Centre from sea level rise?
Please message EOS your answers!