Living shorelines are an important tool in the shoreline protection and conservation toolbox for coastal communities. However, many people are unaware of their many benefits and that they can be used on small-scale private properties in lieu of bulkheads and other hardened structures. While bulkheads do prevent erosion for a time, they require the destruction of important intertidal habitat, increase erosion on neighboring properties and often fail within 20-30 years of installation.
Living shorelines, on the other hand, increase habitat, are self-maintaining, improve water quality, increase storm resilience and have many other benefits in addition to preventing shoreline erosion.
To increase awareness and encourage the use of living shorelines among private property owners in Mississippi, the Mississippi State University (MSU) Living Shorelines Program held a series of workshops in June 2022 supported by the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium. While the team has hosted living shoreline workshops in the past, these differed by targeting one community at a time.
By focusing one community at a time, rather than opening the workshops up to all property owners along the Coast, we hoped to increase engagement in communities. To do this, we sent workshop invitations to waterfront property owners to attend one of our five workshops. The five communities that were invited to workshops were Ocean Springs, Gulfport, D’Iberville and Biloxi, Gautier and Pascagoula, and Bay St. Louis. Some cities were combined due to there being less waterfront property than in the cities that had their own workshops.
The workshops were held on June 13-17, 2022. Each workshop began with a meal provided by the workshop team followed by a short presentation on living shorelines and the services that the living shorelines program team provides. Then, each property owner was given the option to stay and speak with a member of the team about their specific property. Before they left, attendees were also able to set up a time for the team to do an assessment of their shoreline.
Overall, we had owners of 54 waterfront properties attend the workshops totaling 76 people who were introduced to living shorelines, their benefits and the MSU Living Shorelines Program. Of those 54 property owners, 41 chose to stay to have one-on-one conversations with members of the living shorelines team.
Those who did not stay either had already spoken to the team before attending the workshop, felt that they had a stable shoreline as of now and did not need a consultation or were not interested in a living shoreline.
Of the 41 who had one-on-one conversations, 35 requested a shoreline assessment from the team. This equates to 64.8% of property owners who attended the workshop and 85.4% of those who had one-on-one conversations with the team.
Because of the high number of property owners who requested a shoreline assessment, our team considers these workshops a success. To date, we have completed the shoreline assessments at all properties that requested them and have completed many of the living shoreline design drafts as well. Next, we will work with the property owners to finalize the designs and complete the permitting to install a living shoreline. Our team will also continue to engage with waterfront property owners across coastal Mississippi and Alabama.
To learn more about these Living Shoreline Community Workshops, you can access the workshop report.
If you are interested in learning more about living shorelines or want to request a shoreline assessment, you can find information from our living shorelines team at masgc.org/living-shorelines or email [email protected].
Meet the author
Sara Martin
Wetland Specialist, Mississippi State University
Sara Martin is a wetland specialist and extension associate with the Program for Local Adaptation to Changing Environments and the Mississippi State University (MSU) Coastal Research and Extension... Read more
Phone: 228-546-1016
Email: [email protected]