Seeking Solutions for Saltwater Intrusion

Can conservation easements aid both wildlife and farmers feeling the pinch of saltwater intrusion?

By Natalie van Hoose
Conservation
Jun 27, 2024

Osprey (above) nest along Chesapeake Bay. A Maryland farm (below) on the tidal Manokin River in the Chesapeake Bay region has weathered its fair share of saltwater intrusion.

ON JANUARY 9, a severe winter storm sent salt water surging onto the coastal Maryland farm Rick and Kathy Abend have tended since 1972, halting within feet of their home’s back stoop.

Once rare, such floods now happen every year, Rick says of the Chesapeake Bay property where he and his wife grow 46 acres of trees for timber, steward 14 acres of waterfowl and upland habitat, and lease 32 acres for farming corn, soybeans, sorghum and winter wheat.

Even after the salt water subsides, it leaves its signature behind: altered soil composition, stunted crops, decreased yields, dead trees and transformed shoreline. Bald patches where it’s too wet or salty for crops to flourish are expanding. “We have some areas that are so salt-damaged, they won’t even grow weeds,” Rick says.

Coastal farmers like the Abends are increasingly pinned between rising seas and the need to make a living. Programs that transition agricultural fields to wildlife habitat, with financial incentives, offer a solution that can benefit animals and landowners—if farmers are able to act fast enough.

Mid-Atlantic states are particularly vulnerable to saltwater intrusion due to swiftly rising sea levels, according to Pinki Mondal, an environmental geographer at the University of Delaware. Using aerial and satellite images, Mondal found that salt patches nearly doubled between 2011 and 2017 on the Delmarva Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

But the problem won’t stop there. “It is a rapidly changing landscape across all our coastal communities,” Mondal says. Nearly 450,000 acres of U.S. farmland could see coastal flooding by 2040, according to the American Farmland Trust, with salt water seeping up through groundwater reservoirs and overrunning fields during high tides and powerful storms. Meanwhile, drainage ditches designed to funnel water away from crops now serve as inland conduits for salt water.

“I think a lot of people are starting to see the writing on the wall,” says David Satterfield of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. On Delmarva alone, farms within 200 yards of Mondal’s mapped salt patches could lose nearly $150 million in soybean and corn production each year.

That presents a costly crossroads for coastal farmers, who cultivate about 9 percent of U.S. farmland, according to Mondal’s data analysis. Short-term responses include switching to more salt-tolerant crops—sorghum, barley, safflower, sugar beets—and adding lime or gypsum to neutralize soil. Other approaches include investing in diversionary infrastructure. Dick Tunnell, who has farmed 2,000 acres in North Carolina’s Hyde County for 50 years, installed floodgates, pumps and a dike on his property, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) erected dams to keep salt water out of drainage ditches.

Still, the salt creeps through. If sea-level rise projections hold true, “We’re going to be in trouble where I farm,” Tunnell says.

An image of a farm on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

In search of longer-term solutions, some farmers have opted to participate in easement programs that can offer a lifeline for livelihoods and wildlife alike. A handful of federal and state initiatives—such as USDA’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program and Agricultural Conservation Easement Program—pay farmers to take acreage out of production, transitioning cultivated fields to wetlands or to more salt-tolerant grasslands or woodlands while encouraging sustainable timber harvesting, hunting and fishing on the land.

For farmers, easements can provide increased financial stability while, for native wildlife, they can safeguard habitat. In Tunnell’s home state, beneficiaries of wetlands and salt marshes include the threatened eastern black rail and piping plover, endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, and many commercially and recreationally valuable fish, such as red drum and flounder. Marshes also mitigate climate change impacts by reducing erosion and locking in carbon, and they can protect upland crops from storm surge, according to a University of Delaware study.

Aviva Glaser, senior director of agriculture policy for the National Wildlife Federation, says farmers participating in easement programs have reported seeing butterflies, bees and birds not glimpsed since their childhoods—all signs of a healthier ecosystem. “A lot of times, there are farmers, ranchers and forest owners who are ready and willing to create habitat for wildlife on their lands,” says Glaser, who works closely with the USDA to help secure conservation easement funding. “They just need the tools.”

Claire Rapp of the North Carolina Coastal Federation agrees: “We’re trying to figure out ways to fully educate communities on what is happening, why it’s happening and what their options are.”

But tight profit margins can make farmers reluctant to halt cultivation. “They don’t want to lose an acre,” says Bill Edwards, a USDA biologist who works on restoring natural hydrology and waterfowl habitat on North Carolina farms.

As Tunnell says, “If you’ve got good land … you just can’t afford to go into other programs.”

Taking land out of production also can come at an emotional cost. “A piece of land is never just a piece of land,” Mondal says. “Some of these farms have been in families for generations. It’s not easy to let that go.”

In Maryland’s Worcester County, high tides reach farmer Bill Bruning’s fields every couple of years, but marshes have helped buffer the property from waves. The hit to his crop yields from salt water has been negligible so far, but he describes it as an ongoing concern. Still, Bruning can’t envision abandoning the land on the Chincoteague Bay where his family first broke ground in 1949 and will take steps to adapt as needed.

“I would not trade where I live for anything,” he says. “If we have a little saltwater intrusion, I’m just going to have to deal with it.”

Natalie van Hoose is a science writer in Gainesville, Florida.