Essay On Chesapeake Bay

Words: 2252
Pages: 10

The issue with the Chesapeake Bay area is the shoreline is eroding. The sources of this erosion are environmental factors like flooding and storm surges combined with recreational and commercial water use. This is a problem because the shoreline provides a vital habitat for native flora and fauna. Waterfront property owners have tried to protect their property from erosion by building bulkheads, jetties and other armoring techniques. This paper will discuss how these protections affect the ecosystem of the bay. One technique that works to prevent erosion and other damage, while adding more to the shoreline, is the practice of building living shorelines. Studies have shown that living shorelines are designed to attenuate, or lessen the wave energy, caused by wind and recreational boating on the bay. These new shorelines reduce erosion and even add more land to the shore, …show more content…
In the study “Wave Attenuation Experiments Over Living Shorelines Over Time: A Wave Tank Study to Assess Recreational Boating Pressures,” experiments were conducted on how well living shorelines do at calming waves approaching the shore. This study was created in response to shoreline erosion in Mosquito Lagoon, on the eastern coast of central Florida. These results can be interpreted for other coastal regions suffering the same conditions, like the Chesapeake Bay.
An indoor wave tank was used at the Florida Institute of Technology to conduct the shoreline treatment trials. The tank had wave gauges to measure the height of the waves, at three distances from the shore, as they approached the shoreline. Before the trials started, scientists conducted boat wake surveys in the lagoon. This was used to determine the average wave height, time period and number of waves generated by a recreational boat. It was found that the average wave height was 12.7 centimeters (5