WaterWatch Lecture 2024 Ep7: North and South River Marshes and the Legacy of the 1898 Portland Gale

Many residents of the North and South Rivers Watershed know that the 1898 Portland Gale rearranged the estuary when it cut a new inlet between Third and Fourth Cliff in Scituate. What is less known is that high tide levels in parts of the North River rose about a foot and a half as a result of the shortened North River channel. This abrupt increase in water levels represents a 120 year experiment in what happens to salt marshes when you raise water levels, in some ways resembling rapid sea level rise. Brian Yellen will present work from several members of the Sediment and Coastal Dynamics Lab at UMass Amherst to unravel how and why North and South River marshes responded to this unintentional experiment.