Nature along the Coast
Natural coastal elements explained.
An index to pages for a course: which can introduce learners to coastal ecology.
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | habitats delineated | particular class segments | Overview of details | sample essay
There are, as outlined in this page . . . . the basic introduction to understanding natural communities along the coast and the ecological costs of converting beaches, marshes, mangroves and sea grass beds into habitable landscape.
Objective: to emulate sources calling for a revolution in attitudes and implements of living so that our values protect what is truly necessary for life along the seashore.
To do so you must clarify terms, organize crucial concepts, reflect on the author's meaning, and examine the means of reorienting our ideas to transform our behavior so that we embrace a way of life informed by an ecological imagination.
Clarify:
to define concepts , key terms and see the details fitting together.
Introduction: Rachel Carson and the Sea
- Ocean as adversary
- Ocean as places, with edges of which form seashores.
- Ocean as zone of conflict
Mendocino ecological staircase
Overview of the coastal concepts, seaside patterns, ecological features, cycles, places, and
Critical issues,
Geological terms as opposed to geographical and biological terms
- Geology of the western or Pacific Ocean Coast of North America
- Atlantic Ocean Coast of North America
- USA maps
- Sea level rise impacts on the US coastal areas.
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Organize once you clarify:
Physical, chemical and biological properties of seawater.
Animals, plants, and shoreline patterns: of turtles, plovers and marine mammals.
The geology of plate tectonics at a seashore: Case study of Mendocino Pygmy Forests.
Its elemental! The physical geography of the ocean shore.
Sea level, tides, seashore types
Geomorphology, or the study of kinds of shoreline terrains.
An overview of shore habitats
an introduction to coastal ecology
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Reflect on what you organized & clarified:
Mid-term - interviews
Estuaries are unseen treasuries
Ethics and land values
an introduction to coastal ecology
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Examine
the existing needs to reflect on ways to protect coastal processes, functions and life:
Landscapes of the Seaside
Coastal questions of values, the urgency of changing the way we think.
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Edged by the sea, Dutch land use spread to all the world.
From East Anglia to Hong Kong and from Mumbai to Capetown and Guyana, the influences of Dutch reclamation on the politics and landscape of our world spread from nation to nation.
Since Roman times, the Dutch, who settled the mouth of the Rhine river at
the North Sea struggled to keep flood waters and rising seas from destroying the farms and villages. Today, the Netherlands, Britain and parts of Guyana all have coastal defenses, called dykes and drainage canals to control excess water.
An example of Dutch coastal engineering.
"Design with Nature," Ian McHarg discusses the meaning of those native conditions arising from the growth of natural vegetation and geographical conditions in order for him to create residential and commercially viable communities with congenial neighborhood situations that are the combined product of artifice and cultural fashions to meet both human needs and cultural expression, simultaneously while preserving the natural surroundings.
Mcharg relied ins some small part on ideas from ancient concepts, Aldo Leopold, Lewis Mumford, and geographers to redefine development concepts and conceive of ecological planning.
An introduction to coastal ecology.
Science Index | Population Index | Global Warming Index | Nature Index | Brief | Genetics
Index to genetic's related topics
How the policy for agriculture, ports and housing promoted a series of booms, that began in coastal cities.
The settlement of Manhattan island for example led to an enormous transition from marshes to main streets.
Estuaries such as upper New York Bay are unseen treasuries of food.
Defining terms
Reclamation, is the physical alteration of shorelines by a deliberate sequence of dyke building, draining and dredging in order to construct dry land where there was once a shallow basin or tidal sea. Making land out of water bodies. In the Netherlands it means -- polder building-- a polder is the name for a constructed land area surrounded by a wall or levee of higher ground to keep out the sea.
The terms you need to know and use in essays.
| Rachel Louise Carson | 1913-1963 | ||
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She shared her world of the sea & its shoreline as a "house of life." | ||
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Rachel Carson, |
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| Contact with things "as nearly enough, to be eternal." | |||
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| The coast off of Southern California | |||
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Marine policy
"Big campaign money buys special access. . . "
John Dean, Worse than Watergate. p. 76.
Coastal Zone management has been eroded currently by powerful interests and joined socioeconomic forces that drive development, over fishing, loss of valuable open space, and pollution. These may be thought of as the costs of development due to consumption, population migration, and energy costs.
The costs of development in vulnerable coastal areas such as estuaries, marshes, cliff sides, beaches or sea grass beds were manifold. Both direct and indirect costs were passed on to the inhabitants of the affected areas. In that sense there were directly: losses of farms, orchards, topsoil, fisheries and wildlife. But there was often much more. So consider that, indirectly, development of open spaces and catchment areas have made water polluted, cars a necessity, overcrowded islands, congested waterways, inadequate roads, and soaring municipal expenditures.
In considering how to pay for development recall that while the urban tax base was eroded the coastal county development projects produced tax revenues. Such tax on the value of seaside property contributed upwards of forty-five percent [45%] of state and municipal revenues from both property, and sales, if not income, taxes in many states.
Today, Coastal America exists as a means to planning without a constituency for ecological design or protection of landscape values through proper planning. The failures of coast policies are palpable, but its future is in your hands, hearts and minds.
J. Siry
visualize | seeing contrasts | identifying needs | particular segments of the class | Overview of details
Sources
The Coastal Environment, Rachel Carson, and seven significant aspects of seashores
Our Stolen Future survival kit
Ann Simon, The Thin Edge
The terms you need to know and use in essays.
Date: February 10, 2008
