Brooklyn's Evolving Coastline

Having published 2550 posts on this blog it might be expected that I'd forget something along the way. I created the following video back in 2011 to illustrate how much of Brooklyn's coastal wetlands have been lost to development, but I guess it got buried under all the other files. Better late than never. The loss of habitat in the area around Plum "Island" and Barren Island (now Floyd Bennett Field) are particularly startling. It is only now, after some devastating storms, that civil engineers, environmental biologists and politicians realize that these soft buffers play an important role in mitigating storm surges. It is also critically important habitat for migrating and breeding birds. It will likely never return to what it was in Brooklyn back in 1891, but city officials are at least talking about creating nature buffers for future storms.


Brooklyn Coastline from RJ.