Climate change is an overarching problem for Nantucket and the Coastal Resilience Plan (CRP) is part of Nantucket’s response to dealing with a major consequence of climate change: sea level rise. Sea level rise is expected to worsen and exacerbate existing coastal problems of flooding and erosion in the foreseeable future. The risks for Nantucket, a maritime community, are significant. The CRP is an ambitious and forward-thinking document intended to put forward approaches to preserve our Island and its heritage as much as possible.

Nantucket is home to various environmentally conscientiousness non-profit organizations that provide free resources to the community. Luckily, many of these resources include self-guided walks. If you enjoyed this walk, we suggest you check out these as well.

The Envision Resilience Challenge—a coastal resilience initiative that connects academia, local leadership and community members—inspires coastal communities to envision innovative approaches to the impacts of climate change. The design studio calls on multidisciplinary student teams of architects and landscape architects, designers, engineers, environmental scientists, naturalists, journalists and artists to reimagine coastal communities and propose imaginative solutions to the current and future impact of sea level rise. During the 2021 Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge, the student teams were untethered to local zoning, policy and permitting regulations and encouraged to design big and bold, as you will see in their visionary, out-of-the-box ideas. Though the designs may be far from shovel-ready, they created the space for our community to engage in more positive, hopeful and meaningful conversations about our future.

EXPERT-LED INTERACTIVE LECTURES AND FIELD LEARNING EXPERIENCES

The Nantucket Conservation Foundation (NCF) and Linda Loring Nature Foundation (LLNF) teach a Nantucket Coastal Ecology course over 5 weeks. This course provides a broad education in the ecology and management of Nantucket Island’s coastal habitats. Designed as a hybrid course, students will participate in lectures paired with in-person field trips exploring coastal areas around Nantucket. Lectures will be offered hybrid with in-person attendance at the NCF office and live over Zoom. This course will dive into the ecology of dominant key coastal habitats, i.e. salt marshes, dune fields, coastal banks, and more. Students will explore how we define climate change impacts, the projected risks and threats locally and regionally, and ways we can manage for climate change and promote coastal resilience through the natural coastal landscapes of Nantucket.