Coastal Erosion Monitoring
and Education

 

The Coastal Erosion Monitoring and Awareness Project began at Coalition-SGSL in the summer of 2009. With the guidance of coastal zone experts from the Geological Survey of Canada and the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, we developed a toolkit for community groups to monitor and characterize their shoreline. See the powerpoint show on how to use the toolkit here (PDF 3Mb) Specific stretches of coastlines were identified to set up as monitoring sites. The sites were selected with the community groups and are now being monitored. Locations were geo-referenced using GPS and entered into the Coalition-SGSL’s Regional Sustainability Atlas. 
  
The Coalition-SGSL’s project leader Nadine LaPlante and members of the Coastal Erosion Working Group did a partial analysis of the data and presented these results and the project to the communities involved. The presentations intended to show the preliminary results of the data collection, inform the audience about the project and its relevance to their coastal situation, and give next steps for the project. The community groups involved in the project continue monitoring efforts and are always open to new volunteers to continue data collection.
 
We also developed an information brochure on coastal erosion to serve as a basic awareness tool for the community groups. This brochure explains the nature of coastal erosion, what natural processes occur with this phenomenon and what individuals can do to live with coastal erosion.

 

 

The Coastal Erosion Brochure is currently available in English and French in PDF.    We hope to make it available in printed format to Coalition-SGSL members soon.                                                     

The following community groups have been involved in this project:
- Centre d’initiation à la recherche et d’aide au développement durable (CIRADD), Carleton-sur-Mer;  QC http://www.ciradd.ca/ 
- Le Groupe du développement durable du pays de Cocagne, Cocagne, NB; http://www.ecopaysdecocagne.ca/index.php?lang=fr
- Antigonish Harbour Watershed Association, Antigonish, NS; http://www.theanthill.ca/ahwa/2771/Home
- Souris and Area Branch of PEI Wildlife Federation, Souris, PEI; http://www.souriswl.ca/ 
 

 

This Project was undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Department of the Environment.

Coastal Erosion Monitoring and Education Program (CEMEP)
The above project spurred the creation of a new program at the Coalition-SGSL to ensure continued effort towards community based monitoring and education on coastal erosion issues.  The Coastal Erosion Monitoring and Education Program (CEMEP) serves as an umbrella for coastal erosion related projects and efforts at the Coalition-SGSL. This program is supported by the Coastal Erosion Working Group who provide direction around the two main program themes, education and monitoring.
 
The Education component focuses on informing the general population and community decision makers about coastal erosion and means of living sustainably with this natural phenomenon. The Monitoring component helps to build capacity locally for informed decision making regarding coastal erosion. These two components combined have a cumulative effect of empowering residents of the Southern Gulf of St-Lawrence with the knowledge to implement sustainable land-use planning in coastal areas.