The Benefits and Drawbacks of Living Shoreline Erosion Control Methods
Benefits: These alternative stabilization approaches can offer many benefits over typical hard stabilization structures. Living shorelines:
- Maintain natural shoreline dynamics and sand movement
- Trap sand to rebuild eroded shorelines or maintain current shoreline
- Provide important shoreline habitat
- Reduce wave energy
- Absorb storm surge and flood waters
- Filter nutrients and other pollutants from the water
- Maintain beach and intertidal areas that offer public access opportunities for wading, fishing and walking
- Are less costly then structural stabilization (e.g., bulkheads and rip rap)
Drawbacks: While there are many benefits associated with living shorelines, they are not appropriate for all situations. Drawbacks for living shorelines include:
- Not appropriate for high energy environments
- Not as effective where much of the shoreline is already hardened
- Because they are still a relatively new erosion control approach, it may be more difficult to find a marine contractor able to install soft of hybrid shoreline stabilization techniques
- Although research is growing, there is still limited information available on the effectiveness of living shorelines for different types of shorelines and under different energy regimes and storm conditions.