Sea Level Rise May Make Virginia Islanders Climate Change Refugees

Summary: Sea level rise may make Virginia islanders in the Chesapeake Bay climate change refugees, according to study published Dec. 10 in Scientific Reports.

Watery world of Virginia's Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay could be locale yielding first U.S. climate change refugees ~ "Tangier Island, Virginia, where the inhabitants make their living crabbing and fishing in Chesapeake Bay": Jane Thomas, CC BY 2.0, via AN Image and Video Library

Virginia islanders in the Chesapeake Bay are at risk of becoming sea level rise, storm-induced erosion, climate change refugees, according to a study published Dec. 10, 2015, in the online Scientific Reports.

David M. Schulte, lead author and research technical specialist at the Norfolk District of the Army Corps of Engineers, bases his findings upon four Virginia islands. The open-access journal article considers current effects and future impacts of environmentally degrading and globally warming climate change upon Virginia’s only inhabited island in Chesapeake waters. It describes 21st-century threats from glacial melt, groundwater pumping, land subsidence (sinks), meteor aftereffects, sea level rise and storm-induced erosion to fishers, seabirds, seagrasses and wetlands.

Disaster ensues for the Tangier Island Group.

Ferry services fill respective 10.06-mile (16.2-kilometer) and 13.67-mile (22-kilometer) distances from Tangier to the western shore of peninsular Virginia and the eastern shore of mainland Virginia.

Tangier gets business, government, research and tourist traffic as the biggest and the most habitable island of the group including Goose, Port Isobel and Uppards islands. The island has eelgrass and widgeongrass beds for carbon sequestration, coastal protection, erosion control, fish and shellfish nursery habitat, water quality improvement and waterbird nesting sites.

Claudia Banks, island tour director, indicates that floods and storms, once rare and unnoticeable, make bicycle, golf cart and walking routes untraversable in autumn and spring. Floods and storms jeopardize livelihoods since “Everything on Tangier is covered with water.”

Residents such as Carol Pruitt-Moore, a seventh-generation islander, keep Tangier emission-free since “We are one storm away from being washed away or being forced to evacuate.”

But islanders look to extra-local action to keep Tangier inundation-free since the three co-authors specify: “Its [inundation’s] really going to put the town in severe jeopardy.” The three co-authors mention navigation channel boat wakes, sea level rise, storm-induced erosion and tidal creek widenings as splitting Tangier into three marshy islets by 2063. Landmass totals of 875.33 hectares (2,162.99 acres) in 1850 declining to 319.25 hectares (788.88 acres) in 2013 net mean annual losses of 3.41 hectares (8.43 acres).

The 25-, 50- and 100-year timelines offer low, middle and high inundation scenarios.

Dislocation promises to be geo-historically and socio-economically disastrous without $20 to 30 million for beach, breakwater, dune and ridge construction and for loblolly pine plantings.

The mobile home purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Banks in the 1980s and now sitting 150 feet (45.72 meters) closer to shrinking shorelines quantifies sea levels. Erosion from rising sea levels, storm-driven winds and wave fetch reduces island habitability from 39 to one and results in 500 submerged islands since the 1600s. The 1.2-square-mile (3.11-square kilometer) Tangier stands one or two generations away from abandonment.

Climate change turns tragic when “if no action is taken the citizens of Tangier may become among the first climate change refugees in the continental US.”

Figure 3: Current and projected future landmass of the Tangier Islands. Map created using ESRI ArcGIS, ArcMap 10.1. Source = Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo and the GIS User Community: David Schulte et al., CC BY 4.0, via Nature Publishing Group

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Tangier aerial view: Jane Thomas, CC BY 2.0, via AN Image and Video Library @ http://ian.umces.edu/imagelibrary/displayimage-search-0-2568.html

"Check out this article on #climatechange and the rising #tide on the #Tangier Islands.": Scientific Reports @SciReports via Twitter Dec. 11, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/SciReports/status/675355678677065728

Tangier Island landmass projections: David Schulte et al., CC BY 4.0, via Nature Publishing Group @ http://www.nature.com/articles/srep17890/figures/3

For further information:

Marshall, Christa. 11 December 2015. "Virginia Islanders Could Be U.S. First Climate Change Refugees." Scientific American > ClimateWire.
Available @ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/virginia-islanders-could-be-u-s-first-climate-change-refugees/

Schulte, David M., Karin M. Dridge and Mark H. Hudgins. 10 December 2015. "Climate Change and the Evolution and Fate of the Tangier Islands of Chesapeake Bay, USA." Scientific Reports 5: 17890. DOI: 10.1038/srep17890
Available @ http://www.nature.com/articles/srep17890

Scientific Reports @SciReports. 11 December 2015. "Check out this article on #climatechange and the rising #tide on the #Tangier Islands." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/SciReports/status/675355678677065728

wochit News. 10 December 2015. "Climate Change Hitting Chesapeake Bay Island Hard." YouTube.
Available @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9za49b28nuU