Join us on October 25th, for the Webinar “Eelgrass Restoration in Nova Scotia and Blue Carbon”.

This webinar will feature Dr. Kristina Boerder from the Future of Marine Ecosystems (FOME) lab, at Dalhousie University. Dr. Boerder will discuss the Community Eelgrass Restoration Initiative (CERI), an initiative of FOME, and Blue Carbon in eelgrass beds.

Watch the webinar below or here.

Join this Lunch and Learn Webinar, hosted by the Ecology Action Centre for Wetlands Appreciation Week!

Less than 3% of the land area of Nova Scotia consists of "barrens", but these are high priority for conservation due to the presence of rare plants and vegetation types as well as impacts from recreational activities. Dr. Jeremy Lundholm, a research associate with TransCoastal Adaptations at SMU, will discuss barrens landscapes, their biodiversity and origins, and the presence and importance of wetlands within these landscapes.

Join us for Wetlands Appreciation Week on August 16th, 2023 for a tour of the Converse Managed Dyke Realignment and Marsh Restoration site! Learn more about tidal wetland restoration, nature-based climate change adaptation on the Chignecto Isthmus, and how the Making Room for Wetlands project is building resilience in dykeland communities.

Cost: Free!

Audience: Everyone is welcome! Children under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian at all times.

Tour Location: Converse Marsh

Meeting Location: The base of Fort Lawrence Road. 45.841225, -64.267917

To learn more and register for the event, please fill out the form below.

Join this Lunch and Learn Webinar, hosted by the Ecology Action Centre and Nature Nova Scotia for Wetlands Appreciation Week!

As climate change continues, the severity and frequency of extreme weather in Nova Scotia will grow, as will the need for adaptation. Dr. Danika Van Proosdij, Director of TransCoastal Adaptations Centre for Nature-based Solutions, will be discussing her work on making room for wetlands to adapt to climate change. Dr. David Patriquin, retired biology professor, will share his observations studying the wetlands in the Purcells Cove Backlands in HRM, how they’ve reacted to extreme weather events, and what this can tell us about planning for the future.

Join us on July 9th, 2023 for a tour of the Converse Managed Dyke Realignment and Marsh Restoration site! Learn more about tidal wetland restoration, nature-based climate change adaptation on the Chignecto Isthmus, and how the Making Room for Wetlands project is building resilience in dykeland communities.

Cost: Free!

Audience: Everyone is welcome! Children under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian at all times.

Tour Location: Converse Marsh

Meeting Location: The base of Fort Lawrence Road. 45.841225, -64.267917

To learn more and register for the event, please fill out the form below.

TransCoastal Adaptations and the Stewardship Centre for BC are delighted to announce the launch of the updated Green Shores for Homes guide!

Please join us on March 15th, 2023 at 4pm (Atlantic) or 12pm (Pacific) to learn more about the updated guide.

The GSH guide is a guide for homeowners, landscape designers, construction professionals and shoreline practitioners to help minimize the environmental impacts of shoreline development.

Join us on January 25th, for the first TransCoastal Adaptations Webinar of 2023: Reef Balls and Restoration - From Subtidal to Intertidal.

This webinar will feature projects from the Clean Foundation, and how reef balls are being used in restoration and nature-based solutions in Nova Scotia.

Watch the Webinar recording here:

Join us on October 26th, for the next TransCoastal Adaptations Webinar: The Living Dyke - Innovation and collaboration to manage coastal flood risk and adapt to changing conditions in Boundary Bay.

This webinar will feature four speakers, presenting an introduction to the Semiahmoo First Nation and First Nation communities in BC Lower Mainland, a geographic background, and a dive into the Boundary Bay Living Dyke project.

Register for the Zoom event here.

TCA has partnered with Helping Nature Heal to host an upcoming webinar on Helping Nature Heal’s Shore Up workshop program.

Shore Up is a hands-on community-based workshop that teaches nature-based strategies to slow down shoreline erosion and enhance biodiversity and ecosystem health. The Shore Up workshop is for ENGOs, municipalities, government, and community groups who want to learn how to create more resilient shorelines as our climate changes and sea levels rise.

This upcoming webinar is an opportunity to learn more about Shore Up, the techniques that Helping Nature Heal has been applying to the shorelines of the Maritimes for over 20 years, and how your organization can benefit from Shore Up training and creating resilient shorelines.

Click here to register for this Zoom event!

As a follow-up from our popular Making Room for Wetlands webinar last year, we would like to invite you to "Making Room for Wetlands: In Review." This webinar will feature four talks about the Making Room for Wetlands project.

Register for the Zoom event here: https://smu-ca.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuf-mqrzMtEtxWedPlgdVJbFf8f8eYLaRw

As part of the Nature-Based Infrastructure for Coastal Resilience and Risk Reduction project, TransCoastal Adaptations will convene stakeholders and project partners on May 20th to provide project updates, and discuss the potential design and deployment of managed realignment in the Chignecto Isthmus.

This workshop will be hosted virtually through Zoom, and the link to join will be sent to all participants once they have registered for the event.

Session 3: Implementation and Monitoring

TransCoastal Adaptations is hosting a three-part Managed Dyke Realignment workshop series as part of our project Making Room for Wetlands: Implementation of Managed Realignment for Salt Marsh Restoration and Climate Change Adaptation in Nova Scotia.

This workshop will focus on three components of Managed Dyke Realignment and will bring together key researchers and practitioners from Europe and North America. The purpose of this workshop is to connect practitioners and share Managed Realignment Best Practices, lessons learned, and innovations in design and monitoring. Through knowledge sharing with European counterparts, we hope to establish managed realignment as a key nature-based adaptation strategy.

watch the event recording

SPEAKERS

Colin Scott - Managed Realignment in the UK: a Brief History

Colin is an Associate consultant at ABPmer with 28 years’ experience in environmental consultancy. He specialises in advising on coastal habitat creation and restoration projects. He provides advice on selecting sites, designing schemes, securing consents for them and then monitoring how they perform. He also places a high degree of emphasis on communicating the lessons from completed projects by presenting and hosting conferences and training events as well as by managing and updating ABPmer’s online database (www.omreg.net) of completed restoration projects.

Jonathan Dale - Field-Based Monitoring to Assess the Influence of Former Land Use on the Post-Breach Morphological Development of Managed Realignment Schemes

Jonathan Dale is a geomorphologist based at Coventry University, UK. His research investigates the sedimentological evolution of coastal wetland restoration schemes through analysis of the hydrodynamics, surface and sub-surface physicochemical properties, and morphological change. Jonathan has applied these approaches to assess the impact site design and former land use have on the physical functioning of restored intertidal sites, in order to ensure the long-term delivery of the targeted range of ecosystem services.

Jennie Graham - Lessons Learned: Implementing Managed Realignment and Restoring Tidal Wetlands in Nova Scotia

Jennie is the Vice President and Senior Restoration Specialist at CB Wetlands and Environmental Specialists (CBWES Inc.), and focuses primarily on hydrology restoration design, with expertise in GIS analysis, field methodologies, and project management.

Jennie has a M.Sc. in Applied Science and an advanced diploma in Remote Sensing, and has contributed to the restoration of several hundred hectares of coastal wetlands over the past 8 years. She has co-authored scientific and technical papers, presented research at scientific conferences, and helped to supervise and guide students involved in projects at various sites.

TransCoastal Adaptations Team - Panelists

The TransCoastal Adaptations team includes Dr. Danika Van Proosdij, professor at Saint Mary's University, and Tony Bowron, CEO of CB Wetlands and Environmental Specialists and experienced tidal wetland restoration practitioner.

Session 2: Managed Dyke Realignment Design

TransCoastal Adaptations is hosting a three-part Managed Dyke Realignment workshop series as part of our project Making Room for Wetlands: Implementation of Managed Realignment for Salt Marsh Restoration and Climate Change Adaptation in Nova Scotia.

This workshop will focus on three components of Managed Dyke Realignment and will bring together key researchers and practitioners from Europe and North America. The purpose of this workshop is to connect practitioners and share Managed Realignment Best Practices, lessons learned, and innovations in design and monitoring. Through knowledge sharing with European counterparts, we hope to establish managed realignment as a key nature-based adaptation strategy.

Watch the event recording

SPEAKERS

Dr. Jon French - Estuary-Scale Hydrodynamic Impacts of Managed Realignment

Professor Jon French recently completed a 5-year term as Head of UCL Department of Geography, where he also directs the Coastal and Estuarine Research Unit. His interests include coastal and estuarine hydrodynamics and morphodynamics, hazards to coastal infrastructure, and climate change adaptation modelling. Recent projects have included ‘Integrating Coastal Sediment Systems’ (iCOASST) (NERC); ‘Toolkit to improve resilience of critical ports and dependent national supply chain systems against extreme storm surge events’ (NERC); and ‘Coastal resilience in the face of sea-level rise’ (NERC SPF UK Climate Resilience Programme). Jon has extensive consultancy experience in areas including estuary hydrodynamics and modelling; flood defence management; port dredging; submarine geohazards; and critical infrastructure at the coast.

Joshua Kiesel - Effective Design of Managed Realignment Schemes Can Reduce Coastal Flood Risks

Joshua Kiesel is a coastal and marine geographer interested in the ecology and functioning of oceans and coasts. He is a lecturer and PhD student at the Department of Geography, Kiel University. His work focuses on coastal restoration and specifically the effectiveness of wetlands in reducing flood risk. Since November 2020, he is working in the ECAS-Baltic project, exploring the potential of ecosystem-based coastal protection for the German Baltic Sea coast. His expertise involves airborne- and ground-based coastal and marine vegetation surveys, field measurements and modelling of coastal hydrodynamics, as well as GIS and statistics based data analyses. In summer 2015, he joined the research expedition with the German research icebreaker RV Polarstern to the central Arctic Ocean and the North Pole, where he measured sedimentary oxygen uptake rates and associated environmental drivers in shelf and deep-sea sediments.

Dr. Stijn Temmerman - Eco-Geomorphic Modelling to Support Design of Tidal Marsh Creation by Managed Realignment

Dr. Stijn Temmerman is a geographer studying impacts of global change on coasts and river landscapes, and how ecosystems and human society can mitigate and adapt to global change. Coasts and river landscapes are hotspots of biodiversity and human activity that are impacted by sea level rise, changing storm and rainfall patterns, floods and erosion risks, human landscape engineering, etc. Living himself just above sea level, he likes to contribute to science-based solutions to mitigate global and local impacts on coastal and riverine socio-ecological systems. This involves studies on nature-based mitigation of climate impacts, such as flood risk reduction by marshes and mangroves; climate change mitigation by carbon storage in tidal wetlands; resilience of coastal ecosystems to sea level rise, storms and human impacts.

Jennie Graham - Panelist

Jennie Graham is the Vice President and Senior Restoration Specialist at CB Wetlands and Environmental Specialists (CBWES Inc.), and primarily focuses on hydrology restoration design, with expertise in GIS analysis, field methodologies, and project management.

Session 1: Foreshores for Climate Risk Reduction

TransCoastal Adaptations is hosting a three-part Managed Dyke Realignment workshop series as part of our project Making Room for Wetlands: Implementation of Managed Realignment for Salt Marsh Restoration and Climate Change Adaptation in Nova Scotia.

This workshop will focus on three components of Managed Dyke Realignment and will bring together key researchers and practitioners from Europe and North America. The purpose of this workshop is to connect practitioners and share Managed Realignment Best Practices, lessons learned, and innovations in design and monitoring. Through knowledge sharing with European counterparts, we hope to establish managed realignment as a key nature-based adaptation strategy.

Watch the Event Recording

Speakers

Dr. Iris Möller - The Empirical Evidence Base for Salt Marsh Resilience, Water Level, and Wave Reduction

Prof Iris Möller is Head of Department of Geography within the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College, where she leads a coastal research group. She is internationally recognised for her research on the buffering function of coastal wetland environments with a strongly applied focus on improving coastal flood and erosion risk management. Prior to taking up her current position late in 2019, she was Deputy Director of the University of Cambridge’s Coastal Research Unit (CCRU) and University Lectureship in Physical Geography (Coastal Processes) at the Department of Geography at Cambridge. She collaborates across the EU, UK, China, Australia, and the USA on projects that aim to develop a better understanding of how coastal wetlands function and deliver a range of ecosystem services.

Dr. Bas Borsje - Pushing Boundaries: Realizing Resilient and Climate-Proof Coastal Protection

Dr. ir. Bas Borsje is an expert in the field of Building with Nature, more specifically in nature-based coastal protection. Bas holds a master in Civil Engineering (cum laude), a PhD in Ecological Engineering (cum laude), a VENI grant in Nature-based flood protection, was nominated as New Scientist young research talent (top 5) in 2016 and is PI of the NWA-ORC project "Living Dikes" from 2020 onwards.

Bas' research group consists of 10 PhD students (3 finalised, 4 ongoing and 3 vacant) and 6 postdocs (3 finished, 2 ongoing and 1 vacant). For all positions, he was (co-)applicant and/or member of the core writing team (see projects). Moreover, he supervised 40 MSc students and 11 BSc students.

In 2016, Bas became an elected member and in 2019 he became chair of the Young Wadden Academy (YWA). The YWA consists of 5 excellent young Dutch and German scientists with outspoken views about science and scholarship and related policies. The YWA’s main tasks are (i) to encourage young researchers to study the Wadden Sea region through the organization of a yearly conference, (ii) to stimulate interdisciplinary Wadden-related research via joint MSc projects and (iii) to develop a vision with regards to science and governance of this UNESCO world heritage site.

Dr. Vincent Vuik - Vegetated Foreshores in Hydraulic Engineering Practice

Vincent Vuik is a coastal engineer specialized in flood risk and nature-based solutions. He performed his PhD research at Delft University of Technology. He investigated the flood risk reduction potential of vegetated foreshores, such as salt marshes and mangrove forests. At such foreshores, waves, sediment, vegetation and the interactions between these components are of main importance. Vincent has measured wave propagation over vegetated foreshores in the field during severe storms. Further, he has modelled the dominant hydrodynamic and morphological processes, and applied state-of-the-art probabilistic methods for extreme value analysis. Currently, he is part-time employed at HKV Consultants, a Dutch company focusing on water-related consultancy, and part-time at Delft University of Technology.