Coastal Margins

LARCH 414-04 | Tuesday Thursday 1:25 - 5:30 | Peter Stempel

Course Description:

The junction of land and water plays an outsized role in both terrestrial and ocean ecosystems. It is the nursery for fish and shellfish larva and a waypoint for migrating birds. Salt marshes sequester carbon, and microorganisms cycle nutrients from both the land and ocean. It is also a place of intense human activity: water dependent industries, transportation, and recreation all vie for space. Factors such as sediment availability, sea level, ocean temperature, and human management decisions have literally changed the physical form of the land, the distribution of species, and the viability of coastal ecosystems, communities, and economies.

This experimental studio explores how human responses to sea level rise and other changes at the coastal margin—the ecologically rich zone where the land and the water meet—can dynamically adapt to uncertain future conditions for the benefit of ecologies and human habitation. It seeks to move conceptions of climate mitigation and ecological stewardship away from preservation of the status quo to resilient conditions that dynamically accommodate physical, biological, and social uncertainties. It proposes a larger philosophical shift away from a local crisis mind-set to creatively supporting regional and global social-ecological systems.

Students will have the opportunity to create design and policy responses and will evaluate the broader social and cultural implications of their decisions while learning about coastal processes, ecologies, and communities from practicing experts. This will include an examination of thresholds at which future decisions will need to be made and the consequences of different adaptation pathways. Although this studio will engage a real-world site and stakeholders in New England USA, it is not a simulation of professional practice. Rather, it is a set of experiments grounded in current research that are designed to uncover new possibilities to inform practice.

Flyer Text:

This experimental studio explores how human responses to sea level rise and other changes at the coastal margin—the ecologically rich zone where the land and the water meet—can dynamically adapt to uncertain future conditions for the benefit of ecologies and human habitation. It seeks to move conceptions of climate mitigation and ecological stewardship away from preservation of the status quo to resilient conditions that dynamically accommodate physical, biological, and social uncertainties. It proposes a larger philosophical shift away from a local crisis mind-set to creatively supporting regional and global social-ecological systems.