Situated less than half a mile from Biloxi in the Mississippi Sound, Deer Island provides an excellent setting for place-based education connecting student learning to local community issues. Deer Island is subject to many of the same processes observed on the less accessible barrier islands of Mississippi. Hurricane winds and flooding, dredging for navigation and sea level rise have contributed to erosion at a rate of almost 2 acres/year between 1850 and 1999, reducing the area of the island by about one-third.*
Restoration efforts by groups including the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the US Army Corps of Engineers were interrupted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Several years later, restoration efforts to return Deer Island to its 1850 footprint resumed. Vegetation was planted, shorelines were protected with oyster shell and landforms were constructed through beneficial use of dredged material. By 2011, large amounts of sand had been placed strategically on the island creating a wide beach along the island and extending the island west toward the Biloxi shoreline (compare Google Earth images from 2010 and 2011).
In addition to adding new beach to protect the interior of the island, newly placed sand changes habitats (and provides recreational habitat for visiting humans). Plants you see on the island grow where they are because of their elevation and distance from the shoreline.
What happened to the island and its new deposits after the restoration was completed? The sand is still subject to movement with wind and waves. Also, as plants grow, they hold onto sediment, which influences the fate of new sand.
Several years ago, Mississippi Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) educators at The University of Southern Mississippi Marine Education Center (USM MEC) partnered with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources to establish a field monument from which to conduct environmental monitoring along a transect across the island. Educational groups collect elevation data along this transect using a modified Emery method of beach profiling. Participants also record observations on vegetation changes across the island and water quality on each shoreline (see graph).
From these data they construct a graph/profile showing a cross section of the island shape at the transect. These observations give a snapshot of the beach shape at that moment. Repeated over time, they show changes in the shape that may indicate erosion or deposition.
Changing Coastlines workshop for teachers
The MEC built a teacher professional development workshop based on this project and piloted it in 2018. The revised Changing Coastlines workshop joins the schedule of exemplary continuing education for teachers offered through the MASGC at the USM MEC, Dauphin Island Sea Lab – Discovery Hall Programs and the Environmental Studies Center of Mobile County Public Schools.
Participating teachers learn content that provides real-world understanding both of science concepts and how science is used. Classroom instruction is enriched by a teacher’s greater understanding of how wind, waves and sea level rise cause changes on the island. A participant from the 2018 pilot stated, “I used the content I learned to talk about population ecology, and also how scientists collect field data to measure habitat loss.”
Additionally, the specific focus on change over time at Deer Island lends itself to discussion of how the island protects mainland communities during storms and choices communities can make about restoration that might improve their resilience to coastal hazards.
Teacher workshop set for July
The Changing Coastlines Workshop will be held July 13-16, 2023. Teachers who have already attended the summer training will be invited to assist in periodic ongoing data collection. Join us from 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022, for a virtual happy hour to learn more about this workshop and other teacher professional development opportunities. Sign up for the happy hour event. There will be door prizes for teachers who attend.
*Schmid and Otvos 2003.
Meet the author
Jessie Kastler, Ph.D.
Director, Marine Education Center
Jessie Kastler leverages Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant funds and grants from other agencies to produce and implement education programs at The University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research... Read more
Phone: 228-818-8090
Email: [email protected]