Brad Rogers and Brett Berkley stepped carefully on the gravel sill along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in South Baltimore, which when covered with sandy fill will serve as the bed for 11 acres of newly constructed wetlands. Rogers, executive director of the nonprofit South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, has a big role in overseeing the $200 million redevelopment of 19 neighborhoods along one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most neglected shorelines. He aims to double that investment in the next five years. He’s a bricks-and-mortar guy by trade, but wetlands, he said, are “the first line of defense” to protect those redeveloped neighborhoods against storm surge, and climate change. Berkley, his environmental consultant, peered out as if he could see the future. “A successful restoration will depend on the construction of the sill, planting of native vegetation, and creating a gradual elevation change to support a diverse salt marsh ecosystem,” he said on a late summer afternoon. Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season. Six miles north up the Patapsco, in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Jack Cover walked through the floating wetlands exhibition recently opened at the National Aquarium. A curator at the aquarium, Cover felt that wetlands were like nature’s connective tissue, where many species converged to weave the web of life. He sat down on a bench, recalling childhood memories of visiting the Chesapeake Bay and discovering a world of natural wonders. Back down on the Patapsco’s Middle Branch, Dr. Eric Schott, a marine researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, felt the same reverie from his boyhood on the Chesapeake as he stepped, long boots on, into the inky waters to measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity, not far from the shoreline Rogers and Berkley had walked. Schott had momentarily traded places,... |