PHIPPSBURG, Maine — High water levels and powerful waves from coastal storms this past winter caused significant damage to beaches along Maine's coastline, but it's a risk that's becoming more common.
Popham Beach State Park lost up to 10 feet of its sand dunes after those storms, so the park decided to try a sustainable approach using recycled Christmas trees to help restore them. The park strategically laid more than 500 trees, and project leaders are seeing promising results months later.
“The trees have trapped sand. You cannot pull these trees out now. They’re in the sand," Maine Geological Survey marine geologist Peter Slovinsky said.
The goal is for the trees to trap sand throughout the summer and fall and build dune ridges, Slovinsky said. Some trees are almost fully buried, while others are just a quarter of a way deep.
"The idea is to give the beach a helping hand by putting out these trees into these rows that mimic the natural kind of dune crest you see in our dune systems," he said.
The project is considered a nature-based solution because it promotes the environment's natural process to rebuild the eroding dunes.
“This is part of that process to hopefully maintain this area as much as we can as long as we possibly can,” Sean Vaillancourt, the Popham Beach State Park manager, said.
The Morse River, which enters the ocean just west of the beach, is stopping some sand transport, Slovinsky said, but the project is still working, nonetheless. He said the daily onshore winds make it an optimal beach to test the technique.
National climate-focused nonprofit the Surfrider Foundation advocates for nature-based solutions as a way to fight climate change.
"Even if it's just in one small stretch of area, it really is going to be the solution towards going forward to fighting climate change," Isabella DeFrancesco, Surfrider Foundation Northeast's regional manager, said.
Popham Beach State Park wanted to use this nature-based solution, rather than taking a more traditional route, like hauling new sand to the beach or push the existing sand on the beach to restore the dunes, Slovinsky said.