In the fading December light at the causeway beach on Sober Island, N.S., Robin Metcalfe and a group of other citizen scientists set up a device pointing due east down the sand.
This beach profiler — made of wing nuts, curtain rods, and a pocket level tied on with elastic bands — is measuring the slope of the beach, to assess how it’s changing over time.
It’s part of a series of measurements that Metcalfe, who is captain of this crew, and other citizen scientists are using to document the changes happening on this stretch of coastline. Metcalfe also has an automated weather station and rain gauge at his house five minutes down the road, to monitor weather and precipitation.
“The social aspect is really important because it’s getting people out on the beach in December,” he says. “It takes a certain degree of commitment.”
These measurements are part of a monitoring project that started in the summer, gathering weather data and monitoring four beaches in the Sheet Harbour area.
“The idea with our project is that the people will start to understand the coast,” says Camilo Botero, associate researcher at Dalhousie.
Botero, who is from Colombia, started the project after realizing there was little citizen-science monitoring on beaches in Nova Scotia.
“If we really want to transfer the climate action, and we really want the people to start to be better prepared, and if we want to improve coastal governance, we need people to participate, [and] the best way is … if you go directly to the beach.”
‘It builds community’
In its initial phase, the project was largely funded by the Anglican church.
Rev. Marian Lucas-Jefferies, co-ordinator of the Diocesan Environmental Network, an environmental group for the Anglican diocese of Nova Scotia and P.E.I., says supporting the project was in line with the church’s commitment to environmental values.
Lucas-Jefferies says the Network helped secure funding from the church for weather stations and other aspects of the project, and provided connections to Eastern Shore parishes. Building those connections — as well as connections with other people doing similar work in faraway places, like Argentina and the Solomon Islands — is an important part of the network’s role.
“One of the things about citizen science… is people learn how to take action in times of climate change. It’s empowering and it builds community among people, and those are some of our goals.”
In its first six months, the project has involved creating coastal climate teams to measure beaches using the beach profiler and other observations, and recording weather data from people’s homes on the Eastern Shore.
Botero says the main takeaway from the project thus far has been how little information existed about one of Nova Scotia’s wildest stretches of coastline.
“The biggest surprise about the data was that there was no data at all. It was incredible.”
Before the project, there were just two Environment Canada stations, two weather stations and one rain gauge in the area from the Canso Causeway to Eastern Passage.
There was also a lack of information about local coastal plant biodiversity. In a scan of scientific databases, Botero couldn’t find any scientific information of the plant species found on the Eastern Shore.
The lack of data is also an opportunity, Botero says. The Eastern Shore now has triple the number of weather stations and quadruple the number of rain gauges, and teams have been completing monthly surveys of four beaches.
“There was a big gap,” he says. “Now we have — not as much data as we would like to have — but at least we have more data than before.”
Next year, Botero says the plan is to add more parameters for monitoring, including waves and animals, and plans to add more coastal climate teams along the Eastern Shore.
Ultimately, Botero says increased data about changes on the coastline doesn’t just provide scientific information, but increases people’s knowledge about their environment.
“It’s changing the information that we have but also the identity when the people are relating with the coast,” he says. “Our plan is that in two or three years we will have enough information to start identify different patterns in a way that the communities will be better prepared for climate-related events,”
Going forward, the project aims to add more monitoring teams. It will also be part of multiyear research project involving universities in Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Kate Sherren is director of the school for resource and Environmental Studies and Dalhousie University co-lead on the TranSECT project, which is made up of 14 smaller projects in the region.
She says the Eastern Shore monitoring work was a good fit for TranSECT, which is investigating how coastal communities are responding to climate change, including by coming up with their own solutions.
“Anything that puts people into more interaction with the ecosystems that are changing is really good,” she says. “One of the challenges that we have with people being willing to make significant changes or accept changes to policy … is in people’s own experience of those changes, whether they are themselves observing those changes and to what they’re attributing those changes.”
Coastal property owners and researchers are expressing frustration with the provincial government’s approach to safeguarding the coast. Some say there needs to be more leadership from the province after abandoning the Coastal Protection Act.
A project like the Eastern Shore monitoring project can encourage people to make systematic observations of what’s happening, Sherren says.
“Helping people to become more aware or to see their landscape in a different way, I think, is powerful.”
As for Metcalfe, he says he plans to continue to be part of the monitoring project for the foreseeable future, and that he’s already seen community building around the sharing of information.
“It’s in all of our interests to protect the environment, but we have to do it in a way that’s mindful of how people live with the environment, including earning their living.
“With the coastal monitoring, it means we have members of the community who are directly involved in collecting data and seeing what’s happening with climate change.”
Ultimately, Metcalfe says this can foster hope, even at a time when changes happening in the environment can feel dire.
