After 18 months of research, Catherine Seavitt feels “super optimistic” that the work that her team is doing at Jamaica Bay will help to create ‘an adaptable framework for a more resilient Jamaica Bay.’
Seavitt, who is an Associate Professor at City University of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, said researchers took a “boots on the ground approach” and worked with several organizations, including The Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, to complete the project. She has plenty of experience in coastal resiliency, having co-authored On the Water: Palisade Bay, which is a climate adaptation proposal for the New York/New Jersey Upper Harbor which served as the foundation for the 2010 Rising Currents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Jamaica Bay research proposal is a part of a larger project called the Structures of Coastal Resilience (SCR) which is a Rockefeller Foundation-funded grant, and includes a consortium of four universities examining four sites along the east coast.
The Rockefeller Foundation hopes that the SCR will help better prepare people, communities, and systems to withstand catastrophic events — both natural and manmade — so that they are able to bounce back more quickly and emerge stronger.
Aside from CUNY, SCR deployed teams from Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania for the project. In addition to Jamaica Bay, the other locations included in the project are Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Norfolk, Virginia. This grant is working in parallel with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Comprehensive Study of the North Atlantic.
“The whole east coast is going to be impacted by sea level rise,” Seavitt said. “The Army Corps of Engineers is very interested in the work we’re doing.”
Seavitt and her team are working on harnessing the natural processes that the bay provides. “We are researching nature-based systems that may serve to mitigate the impact of storms,” she said. Seavitt also noted that the marsh islands in Jamaica Bay have the capacity to become more robust and turn the bay more resilient.
SCR’s Jamaica Bay proposals include three strategies. The first strategy is to improve the water quality throughout the bay by creating more water exchange between the ocean and the bay, which will in turn nourish the bay. The second strategy is to enhance the verges of the Belt Parkway and coastal edges along at-risk back-bay communities by using marsh terraces, berms, and sunken forests. and the development of strategies for bay nourishment and sediment capture. The last strategy is the implementation of strategies for bay nourishment and the restoration of the salt marsh islands in the bay, which would to a more resilient marsh ecosystem that could help temper the impact of coastal storms.
According to the Army Corps of Engineers the salt marsh islands in Jamaica Bay were projected to vanish by 2025 if left alone.
Although funding for the project is wrapping up, the project is not necessarily over. Seavitt and her team will continue to research and monitor the situation in the Rockaways.
“[Rockaway] is an example of natural systems merging with human systems. It is urban, but wild at the same time. We are trying to show that we don’t have to separate nature from the city.”
Seavitt’s team has made a whole library of resources available to the public via their website. To access the research, go to http://issuu.com/ccny.jamaicabay/docs.
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