Aldaron Laird’s Photos Showcase Sea Level Rise at the Arcata Marsh
This is a press release from Friends of the Arcata Marsh:
McDaniel Slough during a King Tide.
During January and February, photographs by Aldaron Laird will be on display at the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center. Shows featuring local art and photography are sponsored by Friends of the Arcata Marsh. The Interpretive Center, located at 569 South G Street in Arcata, is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call (707) 826-2359.
Aldaron Laird
Aldaron will be giving a lecture to accompany his show at the Interpretive Center and via Zoom on Friday, January 12 starting at 7:30 p.m. The Zoom link is https://humboldtstate.zoom.us/j/84071717621?pwd=TTk3aUJtWGYwb3gvNnRlV3g0M1FBdz09.
Statement from the photographer:
My show is entitled “Sea Level Rise: North Unit of the Arcata Marsh.” This area contains five marshes, four ponds, one lake, a boat launch, 3.5 miles of trails, one mile of City access streets, and an interpretive center.
The Marsh is very much on the frontline for sea level rise impacts this century. Less than a foot of sea level rise during a 2005 New Year’s Eve extreme water event (9.6 feet at NOAA’s North Spit tide gauge), caused by a King Tide and storm surge, resulted in Governor Schwarzenegger declaring a state of disaster on Humboldt Bay. That is less than a foot higher than our mean annual maximum tide (average King Tide) of 8.8 feet!
The diked shorelines on Humboldt Bay are extremely vulnerable to a small sea level rise of just 1-2 feet. The North Unit, under existing shoreline conditions, is vulnerable to sea level rise of 1.6 feet (0.5 meter) to 3.3 feet (1.0 meter), which we are most likely going to experience in the near term and this century.
I have lived in Humboldt since 1975. I am a retired environmental planning consultant who has specialized in sea level rise vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning on Humboldt Bay. I am also an avid kayaker who has circumnavigated all 102 miles of Humboldt Bay’s shoreline and a landscape photographer.
2005 New Year’s Eve extreme high water along Arcata Marsh shoreline.
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it’s the moons fault….
🌕
Sea level rise… or Humboldt Bay is ‘sinking’ ? (Probably both.)
If you explore Humboldt Bay you can see the washed faces of the old mudflats that are exposed at low tides… they have sunk about 1′ to 2′ below the current water level.
For a newer subsidence, in the South Bay (King Salmon/Bhune Point) dropped during the 1980 earthquake. (That was a big one… 7.2 in the middle of the night, it collapsed one of the overpasses at College of Redwoods.) Discovery of that active fault was part of the reason why the nuclear plant was ‘abandoned’.
Up at Bhune Point a some of the clam ‘mud-bar islands’ submerged so they are no longer visible at low tides. When you go by the old ‘Shipwreck’ aquarium site… it’s pretty much submerged in marsh water now.
— odds and ends… high tide plus ‘storm push’.
In 1969 (or so)… Bay water came up to some of the Eureka second street intersections.
First street was awash by about 6″ of water.
In 1870 (or so)… Bay Water rose up and flooded the shorelines… it was deep enough to put out the steam boilers that ran the sawmills mills along the bay.
Shipwreck aquarium, I loved that place when I was kid…
These tides are caused by the moon’s rotation around the Earth.
Sometimes with excessive rainfall water is backed up even more into rivers and bays. It’s a normal occurre and nothing to be overtaxed about.
Don’t Believe the climate hobbists and pseudo scientists in the government..
Both are true.
King tides are indeed caused by the moon and can be exacerbated by heavy rains.
As climate-driven sea level rise (which has been very clearly documented) continues to worsen, high water levels will encroach further into previously unaffected places.
I agree with the climate driven sea level rise, but the previously unaffected placed part has me scratching my head. The earth has had polar ice but two tiny periods in the last 500 million years, a fraction of 1% of the time. We have a long way to go to get out of the current mega ice age we are in but the ebbs and flow of polar ice raises and lowers sea levels with this climate driven change. For instance, the sea level has risen 300ft in the last 10,000 years, quite a rise in the blink of geologic time and that discounts the last 2500 years that were relatively stable, enough for a species that has been around quite a while to form civilizations. If you go to more barren sea shores, at the macro level however you will see sea shore mesas well above current sea levels, Elk’s Head for example, you can get away from geology, they are world wide. There is nowhere anywhere near the coast in either direction that hasn’t been affected by climate change driven sea level rise, ever. To expect this planet to sit still in a dynamic universe to suit your fancy is sheer lunacy. It is a billionaire death cult’s trance to get the masses to voluntarily extinguish themselves through self guilt.
Earth’s temperature is warmer than it has been in 125,000 years and is continuing to warm.
It’s foolish to pretend this is just part of a natural cycle.
Starting at the absolute coldest this planet has ever been for your reference point is pretty funny. I like how your death cult even chucks out the medieval warm period, you know, when Vikings ruled the world sailing passage currently ice locked into north America and the middle east empires baked into oblivion before the first industrial uses of and carbon, to make your fairy tale work. Never mind all the pre-industrial civilizations like the Hopi who vanished to climate change that happens all the time. Where you sitting had a mile of ice on top of it your cited 125,000 years ago, that is a blink of an eye, and you claim there is no natural climate change, hahahahaha! Drink the cool aid much? It isn’t a cycle, it is a trend, the planet is getting colder, we are just bouncing off the bottom trend line (coldest ever) moving to the upper trend (warmer). This is a lizard planet. You should say something like “The science is settled!” because you are as scientifically illiterate as that statement.
How dare you question the narative! What you are saying is hate speech, you are a threat to democracy! I demand that Kym censor your racist post immediately! I do not feel safe with you countering the accepted science with facts, you right wing extreamist! You should at the very least be imprisoned for your disregard of trans people and their pronouns, you white male privileged fascist! Climate change is real! It just snowed for Gods sake! We only have five years to alter the climate or the earth is doomed! The only way to salvation is to reduce the human population to 500,000 people who live in tiny cubicles with no heat or power and eat bugs while the ruling elites continue their decadent lifstyles! I need to go to my safe space…
Oscar the Grouch doesn’t abide by your statements, Walter…..
Do you need a little cheese with you wine? 😩.
The science is settled.
“More than 99.9% of studies agree: Humans caused climate change” https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change
99.9% of studies funded for the express purpose of finding human induced climate change, found human induced climate change.
This is irrefutable evidence that climate fascists have completely corrupted “climate science” and that no one should believe anything they say…
Umm….I have a Masters Degree- in Science! I’m no Dr. Science but I do remember the most exciting thing about the intellectual pursuits in science was that nothing was ever settled. It was just “the best working theory at that time” that was accepted. We used to make fun of people who said stuff like “The science is settled” because it showed a lack of understanding of the scientific process or even what science was. There was always the possibility that some new data or interpretation could upset the current theory. people who said “the science is settled” were not to be trusted because they were already invested in that particular working theory and now were only using the esteemed name of “science” to push their agenda. And that is NOT science. That is politics and misrepresentation of what science really is….I love science. Real science. Not what people turn it into but real open-minded exploration of the truth through measurable data in experiments that can be reproduced science. You should check it out sometime!
the lowest projected tide in the 2024 tide book is -1.9ft locally. last year was -2.0 and the year before was -2.1. 10 years ago the lowest tide was -2.4ft. if you spend time in harbors that have fixed docks that are 20 plus years old, you know the sea level is rising because you get to see it and understand it without anyone telling you. its rising, lets just hope it doesn’t rise dramatically like the alarmist say.
Tide books are estimates, not measurements.
Sea levels have been rising since the end of the little ice age. The rate of rise has not increased…
i can assure you that it has but it’s not worth debating with someone that hasn’t learned it for themselves.
Or is it the earth is sinking? And which is which? “In Humboldt Bay, tectonic subsidence exacerbates sea-level rise (SLR).”
https://www.usgs.gov/index.php/centers/california-water-science-center/science/sediment-supply-salt-marsh-monitoring-and-carbon#overview
the earth isn’t sinking on the east coast and the same data is recorded. the last coastal flooding we had was also a coastal flooding alert along the east coast. the rivers have no effect.
I agree with your points on tides.
Does it matter if the land/sea relationship is tidal or subsidence?
I think the approach would be the same.
This is how Science asks us to approach it.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/understanding-living-shorelines
Allow me to enlighten you, that is not how science works. Humanity did not throw out Newtonian mechanics simply because it doesn’t work in all contexts. I advice you not to test that theory by smashing your head into a brick wall to see if quantum theory will prevent any injury.
Regarding climate change, let me try a parable. A man had his car parked on a hill, facing in the downward direction. He put it into drive and released the brake. It was an automatic, he worried not about a clutch. Now his car began rolling downhill, being naturally accelerated by gravity. However, the man was in a hurry, and so he laid his foot most heavily on the gas pedal, and lo his acceleration rose ever higher. When finally his stoppable mass met an immovable object, his matter was altered so much more due to the additional velocity he’d gained.
Uhhhh, wrong.
FALSE
It’s foolish to think humanity can control climate or the flu. The smartest humans have failed miserably at both, crack me up.
Control is a bad word. A silly word. But mitigate? Yes.
Hucksterism. While on the Board of Directors for HBMWD, Laird did his bay studies,
very selectively, only reporting on the interior coast of the peninsula and bay, blacking
out the ocean side of the peninsula in his reports.
Simultaneously the ocean side of the peninsula was being destabilized, through grass removal, exposing HBMWDs shoreline infrastructure to the Velocity Zone, a FEMA violation and a very very risky and criminal approach to coastal management.
We’ve lost miles of wetland wildlife habitat, stability and are now in violation of FEMA.
Laird made sure not to see and not to tell.
We had 30′ constructed vegetated dunes to the west of HBMWD infrastructure, now gone for a failed weeding program. Who oversees this?
Wild ducks are very important…..Amazing how they utilize the Pacific Flyway, widgeon, spoonies, mallard, pintail, cinnamon-blue-green teal, wood ducks, goldeneye, merganser, bufflehead, amongst others, and geese like Aleutian, Brandt, Canadian, Snow, amongst others. Not a resource to mess with as they utilize our coast as a rest stop.
Absolutely. The Porter/Cologne funding was to enhance wetlands and wildlife.
The Migratory Bird Treaty celebrated its centennial in 2018, Humboldt celebrated
by destroying the wetlands that our plantings had created.
Audobon Society looked the other way.
Yes wild ducks are great. That’s why we should protect actual wetlands. Ducks being wonderful is not however a sound basis of an argument for obliterating a rare ecosystem, full of endemic plants, in favor of man-made wetlands.
What are you defending?
Name one site that the phyto-fascists left better than they found it.
Your results benefit no living thing, just the folks cashing the check.
….And here is the view at the max low tide, hours after the high in 2023.
That post is usually 1/2 to 2/3s under water.
OMG the OCEANS are DRYING UP!!!!!!!11111!!!!
Sea level rise during storm season. Hmm.
I am really concerned about what passes for “SCIENCE!!!” these days.
I think these people forget it is a process, not a religion.