In response to repeated nuisance flooding events that have impacted operations and visitor access at the Battleship NORTH CAROLINA Park, NCCOS scientists are supporting park mangers in their efforts to redesign the park surrounding the historic WWII battleship.
Why We Care
The USS North Carolina, a National Historic Landmark that serves as North Carolina’s official memorial to WWII veterans, is a highly treasured cultural resource and one of the most frequented tourist attractions in the state, with more than 250,000 visitors annually (Photo 1). Since 1961, the USS North Carolina has been moored in a dredged slip on the Cape Fear River among more than 2,000 acres of tidal wetlands and intertidal shoreline on Eagles Island, directly across from Wilmington, North Carolina. The frequency and severity of flooding events along this stretch of the river has increased dramatically, with 50 percent more flooding events in the past 15 years than during the previous 60 years combined. “Sunny day” flooding at Battleship Park results in restricted access to visitors and loss of revenue, vital to maintain the ship and the park’s tourist facilities (Photo 2).
What We Are Doing
The landscape redesign, called “Living With Water,” involves converting two acres of parking area to tidal wetland and installing a living shoreline along the battleship’s berth. Once completed, this project will increase wetland habitat along an urbanized stretch of the Cape Fear River and will serve as an outdoor classroom, offering an opportunity to educate visitors about the value of nature-based solutions to coastal hazards. NCCOS scientists, in addition to advising on living shoreline design, instrumented the site with water-level and salinity sensors and collected Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS, aka drone) imagery to facilitate the creation of high-resolution elevation models of the project area. NCCOS used the collected data to create a visualization tool that illustrates flooding impacts and how they change throughout the local tide cycle (see visualization image below). In addition to helping site managers communicate their flooding-related challenges, these elevation models were used to inform the redesign effort.
Once construction is completed (in early 2025) NCCOS scientists, in partnership with researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, will collect post-construction data to quantify the ecological and resilience benefits of this project.
Benefits of Our Work
The Living With Water restoration project represents a novel approach to addressing nuisance flooding. In addition to alleviating the current flooding challenges at the USS North Carolina, this project provides a model for how to adapt to increasing water levels in situations where there is no room to retreat. The lessons learned from this ambitious project will be critical for informing future responses to the increasing threat of coastal flooding.
Dr. Jenny L. Davis, NCCOS Research Ecologist, leads this project with assistance from scientists Dr. Carolyn Currin (NCCOS) and Quentin Walker (CSS Inc.). The project is in partnership with the Battleship North Carolina.
