What Will Climate Change Mean for Martha's Vineyard?

It has been quite a while since my last post! Over the last couple months I have been focused on finishing up my M.A. in the Geography Department. Much of this time was spent on my thesis, which I wrote a post about back in February. The full text, entitled An Integrated Approach for Developing Adaptation Strategies in Climate Planning: A Case Study of Vulnerability in Dukes County, Massachusetts, is now available for download from Digital Commons @ UConn.

My goal for this project was to develop a theoretical framework that serves as a GIS-based decision support system for policy makers to determine where climate change adaptation policies are needed. This framework is operationalized through a case study of vulnerability of Dukes County, Massachusetts. Here is the abstract in full:

Climate Action Plans (CAP’s) are recent innovations in policy that have been catalyzed by a need to adjust the relationship between human activity and the Earth’s climate system. CAP’s often are composed of methods to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in addition to adaptation strategies. Research indicates, however, that many plans focus on mitigation strategies while adaptation policies related to predicted changes caused by climate change are often overlooked. This thesis presents an integrative framework for locating areas that are in need of adaptation strategies through a GIS based decision support system that visualizes vulnerability. It is operationalized through an empirical study of Dukes County, Massachusetts.


Dukes County is a New England county composed of the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Gosnold. The county has a long history of commercial fishing, but more recently caters to affluent seasonal tourists. With both economic activities heavily reliant upon the ocean as a resource, climate sensitive hazards, such as sea level rise and tropical storms, pose an important risk to the population, built environment, and the natural environment that has made the study area a highly desirable New England tourist destination.

The results of my case study conclude that long term climate processes have shaped the way in which Dukes County has developed through the geomorphic influence of the last glaciation. The up-island towns of Martha's Vineyard (Aquinnah, Chilmark, & West Tisbury) and Gosnold differ in geography- both physically and socially- from their down-island counterparts (Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, & Tisbury). This geographic variation results in an unequal distribution of vulnerability related to climate sensitive hazards distributed throughout the county. I have quantified this vulnerability through examining the amount of various land types that could be impacted by climate sensitive hazards (sea level rise and storm surge events) in addition to creating a social vulnerability index for the seven county subdivisions in the county. Maps of the location of important infrastructure related to worst case storm surge are also available in Appendix D. Generally speaking, my study concludes:

Flatter land that is also lower in elevation down-island has traditionally been developed and inhabited more than the up-island land of Martha’s Vineyard and the islands of Gosnold. Consequently, larger populations and more developed land are at risk to hazards whose exposure is largely dependent upon elevation, like storm surge and sea level rise (down-island). 

Check out the full text for more!

Surging Seas: Find Out What Sea Level Rise Will Mean For You!

Climate Central has created a web application that displays hypothetical effects of sea level rise around the country. Appropriately dubbed Surging Seas, this interactive map allows you to zoom to individual states and pan the map or search by area code. Once you find your area of interest, you can see the amount of land inundated by different values of sea level rise on the map and view statistics of population, homes, and land area by county or city (similar to my post last month about Dukes County, MA). Water level is adjusted simply by a slider on the left of the page, and as an area gets inundated, a white mask dissipates, revealing aerial imagery of the "flooded" area. Along with this dynamic map, Climate Central also produced a report on the threat that sea level rise presents to the United States.
Surging Seas is very cool and easy to use - I definitely recommend checking out how some of your favorite coastal places may be altered by the sea in the future! Try it below!

What Will Sea Level Rise Mean For Martha's Vineyard?

Fueled by warming global temperatures, sea level is rising throughout New England. Dukes County, Massachusetts, which is composed of the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Gosnold (South of Cape Cod and West of Nantucket in the map above), could be especially vulnerable to loss of land reclaimed by the sea. How much land is lost, exactly, and damage done will depend on the rate at which the rising occurs and actions taken by policymakers. By looking at data from a couple sources, however, it is possible to begin to understand what elevations of sea level rise could cause damage and which areas could be affected most severely.

First, here are the rates of sea level rise in two locations close to Dukes County- Nantucket and Woods Hole. These NOAA charts show observed trend in sea level during the 20th century:

Both of the charts above show that sea level is indeed rising in the area, but relatively slowly. The Nantucket graph shows a larger increase of 2.95 millimeters a year, but even with this number it would take over 300 years for the sea to rise a full meter. This may seem comforting, but there are still uncertainties within the climate system regarding sea level and recent research has indicated that sea level is rising faster than it has in two thousand years. With factors such as large amounts of ice loss in the polar regions and thermal expansion, this rate could increase. 

So, based on elevation data, let's take a look at what hypothetical increases in sea level would mean for The Vineyard and Gosnold:

While a rise of 1 meter would affect only 1% of the total land area of Dukes County, a rise of 5 meters would be disastrous and leave over 20% of the land in the county inundated. As we can see in the map below, there are large areas that would be vulnerable including much of the southern and eastern coasts of Martha's Vineyard.

An interesting and important conclusion from this analysis is the dramatic increase in effected land if sea level rise were to reach 3 meters. The graph below shows a crucial threshold; an increase of 2 meters will only cumulatively affect about 3% of the county, while the amount of new land affected when sea level rises from 2 to 3 meters is 9% (putting the would-be cumulative total at 12% of the total land in the county).

About this Post: This post includes some of the research I have done as a graduate student here at UConn in the Department of Geography. It was performed using ESRI's ArcMap, Microsoft Excel, and elevation data publicly available from MassGIS. I will be presenting this, in addition to other geographic analyses pertaining to storm surge vulnerability and social vulnerability, in a poster session at the 2012 AAG Annual Meeting in New York City this weekend.

An Emerging Hockey Stick: Sea Level Rise

This video, which I first saw posted on Climate Denial Crock of the Week, discusses the emerging opinion that sea level rise is experiencing a sharp increase that is similar to the recent rise in temperatures (see the infamous "hockey stick" temperature graph below).

Similar to the recent rise of global average temperatures (see above), scientists are beginning to describe a sharp, "hockey stick"- like increase in sea level rise.

For more on sea level rise, check out this earlier post: The Rising Sea.

Sea Level Rise in New England

Last week, I wrote a post discussing climate change and rising sea level, which focuses on the global scale. Back in April, Climatide published a post that discusses four reasons for sea level rise in New England. The author, Heather Goldstone, lists these four phenomena as influences on New England's "above average" sea level rise:

• Rising Ocean Temperatures
• Melting Ice
• Changing Circulation
• Shifting Land

Visit the Climatide article for more!

The Rising Sea

In honor of Discovery Channel's Shark Week, the CRE Blog is featuring ocean-related content  this week.

Loss of land-based ice, like on Antarctica, is one of the driving factors behind sea level rise

Climate is the driver of sea level change. The Earth has alternated between Glacial and Interglacial Periods for millions of years. During a Glacial Period, or Ice Age, much of the water on Earth is trapped in ice sheets and, consequently, sea level drops. Interglacial Periods, on the other hand, are times of warmer temperatures which cause ice sheets to melt. When the ice becomes liquid water, it eventually finds its way to the oceans and raises the sea level. In addition, because the oceans are warmer during interglacial periods, the water expands (known as thermal expansion), which also adds to the sea level rising.

This animation from NOAA shows evidence of loss of ice in the North Pole.

Sea level has steadily risen 1-2.5 millimeters a year since 1900, and it is expected to continue to rise throughout the 21st century. Although there is no perfect model to absolutely predict the future, it is possible to investigate "What If?"

Models based on elevation data can predict what areas could be vulnerable due to rising sea levels.

The Department of Geosciences Environmental Studies Laboratory at the University of Arizona has a web tool that does just that. They have developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) that uses Digital Elevation Models (DEM) to show what areas are potentially vulnerable to sea level change. This web visualization, developed with ESRI's ArcViewer for Flex, allows users to set the amount of sea level rise in one meter increments with a range from no change to six meters.