More than half of the Chesapeake Bay?s beaches and the state?s treasured Smith and Tangier islands could be submerged within the next hundred years if sea levels rise about 2 feet, a new study shows.
“Few places in America are as vulnerable as the Chesapeake Bay,” said Patty Glick, senior global warming specialist and lead author of the study released Thursday by the National Wildlife Federation.
Wiping out thousands of acres of undeveloped land and marshes also threatens the area?s animals and plants, putting the region?s ecology and economy in jeopardy, researchers said.
The National Wildlife Federation?s study of the Chesapeake Bay region is the “most comprehensive and detailed analysis on how sea level rise could affect coastal habitats,” Glick said.
Using the middle range of internationally accepted predictions of sea level rise from global warming ? about 2 feet ? researchers modeled wetland conversion, she said.
By 2100, more than 167,000 acres of undeveloped land and about 161,000 acres of brackish marsh would be replaced by open water or salt marsh, the study found. Ocean beaches would decline by 58 percent and estuarine beaches by 69 percent.
In some places, the beaches might recede, but shoreline development and bulkheads would restrict that movement, Glick
said.
Warming sea temperatures are affecting some underwater plants and animals, as evident in the destruction of huge areas of eel grass in 2005, said Emmett Duffy, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine
Science.
Global warming is one more threat to the Bay ecosystem under attack from pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus, said Beth McGee, senior regional water quality scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Wetlands filter these pollutants, she added.
Researchers and activists pointed to the need to cut global warming pollution by 2 percent per year to meet an 80 percent reduction goal by 2050.
In Maryland, lawmakers recently mandated a 25 percent reduction in emissions by 2020. A more stringent requirement to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2050 instead became a goal.
