Innovation Anthology #701:
Climatologist Dr. Adam Fenech has been collecting information and monitoring the impact of climate change.
In his case, the focus is coastal erosion around Prince Edward Island.
Dr. Fenech says people are dealing with the receding coastline in various ways.
For example, agencies like Parks Canada are removing their infrastructure and retreating inland.
Some residents, however, are choosing to armour themselves by building expensive sea walls with imported rocks.
DR ADAM FENECH: It will work in the short time, but over time, you’re going to have to replace whatever you put in, because the sea is arising, you kind of lose the battle against nature if you try to protect yourself. The big issue for why PEI has had this increase in coastal erosion is we’ve lost most of the protective sea ice. During the winter the province would be surrounded with ice which would absorb the energy from the winter storms that cause the damage that we see for coastal erosion. There was a 12 year period or so where there was no sea ice and that’s where we saw the increase in coastal erosion.
The rock seawalls actually make erosion worse for unprotected neighbours.
You can listen to the full interview with Dr. Adam Fenech at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Program Date: 2015-07-23