Historical Loss and Current Rehabilitation of Shoreline Habitat along an Urban-Industrial River—Detroit River, Michigan, USA

Abstract

Abstract:The purpose of this study was to evaluate the historical loss and current shoreline habitat rehabilitation efforts along the urban-industrial Detroit River using geographical information system methods and a shoreline survey. This study found a 97% loss of historical coastal wetlands to human development. By 1985, 55% of the U.S. mainland shoreline had been hardened with steel sheet piling or concrete breakwater that provide limited habitat. Since 1995, 19 projects were implemented, improving 4.93 km of shoreline habitat. A comparison of the 1985 and 2015 georeferenced aerial imagery showed that 2.32 km of soft shoreline was also converted to hard shoreline during this timeframe. Of the 19 projects surveyed, 11 representing 3.35 km made habitat improvements to shoreline that was already georeferenced as "soft", three representing 360 m converted shoreline from "hard" to "soft", and five representing 1.22 km added incidental habitat to hardened shoreline. Even with the addition of 1.58 km of new soft shoreline and incidental habitat, there was an overall net loss of 0.74 km of soft shoreline over the 30-year timeframe. To reach the "good" state of at least 70% soft shoreline, an additional 12.1 km of soft shoreline will have to be added. This confirms that shoreline hardening continues despite the best efforts of resource managers and conservation organizations. Resource managers must become opportunistic and get involved up front in urban waterfront redevelopment projects to advocate for habitat. Incremental progress will undoubtedly be slow following adaptive management.

Drivers and projections of vegetation loss in the Pantanal and surrounding ecosystems

“…In Brazil, most of these scenario modeling exercises have targeted the Amazon, highlighting potential impacts of maintaining historical rates of deforestation on biodiversity (e.g., Laurance et al, 2001, Soares-Filho et al, 2006, and estimating the impacts of implementing policies to prevent deforestation (Rosa et al, 2013, Bradley et al, 2017. In general, the use of scenario modeling is more common for forested areas than for non-forest biomes, such as periodically flooded savanna, that face significant conversion (Zedler & Kercher, 2005;Reis et al, 2017;Hartig & Bennion, 2017). In addition, to our knowledge, vegetation loss at the property-level has yet to be considered for any tropical wetland.…”

Resilience and Sustainability in Architecture and Urban Planning: Policies, Practices, Strategies and Visions

“…Hard engineering management involves using artificial structures, whereas soft engineering management is a more sustainable and natural approach to manage coastal areas, such as to tackle coastal erosion [69]. The literature identified a range of potential countermeasures for disaster risk reduction in these broad categories: (1) hard engineering, containing seawall, groynes, and other hard engineered structures [70]; (2) soft engineering, including beach nourishment, mangrove afforestation [57,71,72], coral reef transplant [73], and coastal forest plantation [71]; (3) combined measures, such as beach nourishment seawall/groynes/breakwaters [74].…”

Macroinvertebrate communities in Detroit River coastal wetlands: association to water quality status and tributary inputs.

“…Coastal wetlands within the Detroit River are recognized as important habitat supporting sh and wildlife biodiversity for both Canada and the United States (DRIWREA 2001;ERCA, 2013). Anthropogenic stressors have strained the river since European settlement resulting in losses of 97% of its historical coastal wetland habitat (Hartig and Bennion 2017). In addition to wetland loss, degraded water quality coupled with intense sediment pollution from regional industrialization led to the river being classi ed as a Great Lakes Area of Concern (AOC) within the binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA, 2012).…”