What Is a Living Shoreline?
Living shorelines are creative solutions to coastal issues like erosion, flooding, and storm damage. They are made of natural materials that provide surface and structure for species to settle on, which once established, will create fisheries habitat. Living shorelines are sometimes referred to as soft or green because they are made of non-traditional materials including coir (burlap-like), organic fiber mats, bio-logs, sand, plants, and oyster shells. As other organisms attach and grow in and on the living shoreline materials, they become more stable over time.
Benefits of Living Shorelines
This diverse living structure is low maintenance, cost effective, attractive, and has the potential to create even more shoreline protection. Living shorelines provide a double benefit to impacted areas compared to protections made from more traditional, hard coastal armoring including structures like concrete bulkheads and seawalls. Traditional hard coastal armoring degrades and fails over time, which can cause unintended impacts to the coastline, and typically offer little habitat-forming surface area.
Benefits of living shorelines include:
- Improving water quality by filtration
- Buffering storm surges by storing floodwater
- Higher resiliency against storms compared to bulkheads
- Reducing erosion by absorbing wave energy and stabilizing sediments
- Potential for carbon storage
- Increase biodiversity and fisheries habitat
How Can Normandeau Help?
While design and installation are generally handled by engineers, Normandeau’s expert scientists can suggest project proponents that may not have been considered. Normandeau can also help to fine tune concepts for projects that are already open to living shorelines. For example, with restoration projects, we can offer input on how to best restore a habitat by determining the existing ecological conditions and then offering suggestions based on that more site-specific information—thus accomplishing the overall goal to create a self-sustaining healthy habitat where one does not currently exist.
To find out how our specialized environmental knowledge and experience can help streamline and accelerate your next project, Contact Us.
