Climate change is causing dramatic coastal erosion in Nova Scotia, forcing communities to take drastic measures to protect their heritage and infrastructure. The Walton Harbour lighthouse, a historic landmark, was recently moved inland to save it from falling victim to the eroding coastline.
For more than 150 years, the stout and tidy Walton Harbour lighthouse in Nova Scotia has stood watch from a cliff overlooking the upper Bay of Fundy. But in recent years, coastal erosion left the historic wooden tower perilously close to the cliff's edge, raising concerns that the community could lose a tourist draw and a link to its past. 'In the past 10 years or so, the erosion has increased in speed,' says John Ogilvie, vice-president of the Walton Area Development Association.
'On both sides, the cliff was coming inwards .... We needed to find a way to protect a hugely important asset to our community.' In November, the municipality set aside $100,000 to drag the lighthouse about 45 metres inland to safety. The costly move illustrates the real impact of climate change in a part of the country where the coastline is steadily retreating, sometimes at an alarming rate. 'Climate change isn't a future thing,' says Ogilvie, who is also the municipality's climate action co-ordinator.'It's here and we're facing it down now .... And that can mean putting up big money to change the way we do things.' With 13,000 kilometres of coastline, Nova Scotia faces significant risks as storms intensify and seas rise.'We're seeing more storms and they're are getting stronger,' Ogilivie says.'We seeing that with the damage from hurricanes and the wild extremes in our weather.' Research scientist Tim Webster, an expert on coastal issues, says data he has collected during the past 20 years show the province's shoreline is moving inland, on average, about 30 centimetres, or one foot, every year. 'But that's a little misleading because it's an episodic phenomenon,' says Webster, who leads the geomatics research group at the Nova Scotia Community College campus in Middleton, N.S.'We could have years go by where we don't have any erosion, and then you get a couple of big storms and all of a sudden you've eroded a few metre
CLIMATE CHANGE COASTAL EROSION NOVA SCOTIA LIGHTHOUSE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
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