Natural History Wanderings

The LA Times reports on the loss of Californian’s Salt Marshes

On one side, there’s the rising ocean. On the other, rising buildings.

Squeezed between the two are California’s salt marshes — a unique ecosystem filled with pickleweed and cordgrass, shorebirds and many endangered species.

Coastal wetlands such as Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County, the marshes along Morro Bay and the ecological preserve in Newport Beach can purify the air, cleanse urban runoff before it flows into the sea and reduce flooding by absorbing storm surges like a sponge.

But there’s little room left for this ecosystem along the changing Pacific Coast, as the sea continues to rise and Californians continue to develop the shore. Southern California today has already lost three-quarters of its salt marshes.

The rest could be gone within 100 years.

Read article and see graphics at Salt marshes will vanish in less than a century if seas keep rising and California keeps building, study finds