Tag: Flood

East Atlantic Flyway

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Migration over the River Crouch, 19th February 2023

I was pleased to see the ‘East Atlantic Flyway‘ among the seven sites recently backed by the UK government for Unesco world heritage status and the recognition of the ecological importance of the east coast wetlands that stretch from the Humber to the Thames.

This oriental margin is the terraqueous zone I wrote about in Managed Retreat #1, a fudge of ‘warpings, flats, carrs, fenlands, broads, salt marshes, intertidals, littoral zones and the drowned lands of the London-Brabant Massif’. In the tamed realm of these islands, it’s one of those places where the self-willed still pierces the fabric of the human superstructure, where civilization is thinner.

Continue reading “East Atlantic Flyway” →

Beneath the Seawall, the Beach of Dreams

James Piers Taylor4 Comments
Photograph of the walkers paused by the entombed Bradwell Nuclear Power Station to hear Angenita Teekens speak.
The walk pauses by the entombed Bradwell Nuclear Power Station to hear Angenita Teekens on her mile

Last Sunday I participated in a stage of Beach of Dreams, walking between Bradwell Waterside and Burnham-on-Crouch. Beach of Dreams is an art project initiated by Ali Pretty of Kinetika, it’s a collaborative 500-mile walk between Lowestoft and Tilbury

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Vulnerable to Flooding

James Piers Taylor1 Comment

Screenshot 2019-11-10 at 15.17.33
Lots of the local ecologically concerned folk are sharing this news story based on the
Climate Central flood map update using the CoastalDEM® v1.1 digital elevation model. I’m not immune to doing so myself. Combined with the recent devastating floods in the north of England these projections seem to offer a warning from the future that Continue reading “Vulnerable to Flooding” →

Climate Emergency

James Piers Taylor3 Comments

rebel-for-life

On 8th December I posted on social media about trying to find a point of agency in the face of the wicked problem of climate change – partly re-energised by the Extinction Rebellion actions:

‘I’ve never been a member of a political party, I’ve always been against it on the basis that joining a political party seemed to indicate you supported implicitly everything their representatives ended up saying or doing, no matter how idiotic, and even the barmiest parts of their manifestos. No thanks, I favoured the Groucho Marxist position. Continue reading “Climate Emergency” →

Where You At Q2: How many days til the moon is full?

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The supermoon of March 19th, 2011

 

The second question in the Where You At? bioregional quiz is:

How many days til the moon is full?

I’m not sure how good I would be at this calculation generally. I can’t remember seeing the moon lately but then I can’t remember looking at the night sky recently either. Today, Wednesday 11th April 2018, I’m pretty sure the last full moon was Easter Saturday – which was 31st March – which I think means that we are a few days off new moon – so perhaps it’s not surprising I haven’t seen the moon lately. The moon has a 28-day cycle, so the next full moon should be in about 17 days time – 28th April.

Ok, let’s check. Continue reading “Where You At Q2: How many days til the moon is full?” →

Greenhouse Britain

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storm
A witch conjures a storm and brings terror to the seas, woodcut from ‘Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus’, (1555)

The next report from the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due late in 2019. The lag time between data gathering and data publication, plus the need for an agreed consensus amidst the contributors have conspired in previous editions to present overly optimistic scenarios, it’s now widely recognised that they’ve routinely underestimated the rate of global warming. A recent study suggests that we might see 1.5 metres of sea-level rise before 2100: ‘Revised median RSL [relative sea-level] projections for a high-emissions future would, without protective measures, by 2100 submerge land currently home to more than 153 million people’. If we don’t avoid those high-emissions scenarios we’re also locking in greater future sea-level rises as Antarctica and Greenland give up their land-based ice to the sea.

A look over the Dengie’s sea walls at high tide and imagining another 150cm of water is a sobering matter – factor in the conditions that caused the spate of inundations referred to in a previous post and you can see we have a problem. Continue reading “Greenhouse Britain” →

Desk Research: Two Horseshoes

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Screen Shot 2018-03-30 at 13.29.14

When it comes to catastrophic flooding in Essex 1953 tends to get all the coverage, but the inundation of 1897 was equally noteworthy – after breaches in the sea walls 30-35,000 acres of farmland were underwater. Eventually most of that land was re-claimed, but a stretch of the north bank of the Crouch, near North Fambridge, still reveals an area that was lost. Known locally as the horseshoes (not to be confused with the Three Horsehoes on Burnham Road) these artificial bays reflect the fall back defensive line that eventually became the de facto border between land and water when the original sea wall could not be rebuilt with the labour and resources available, The Google aerial view reveals something of the lost wall  and lines of wooden stakes are visible at low tide marking where it would have been. Continue reading “Desk Research: Two Horseshoes” →