8 minute read
LIVING WITH WATER
![Decades in the [Print]Making](https://assets.isu.pub/document-structure/240716165016-6ef1412e95ee69c6e5b2f7b1a7e79cd3/v1/f9b9daed0c1846f9773dde716551d548.jpeg?crop=760%2C570%2Cx0%2Cy0&originalHeight=760&originalWidth=760&zoom=1)
UNCW labs work with Battleship North Carolina to evaluate effect of groundbreaking flood mitigation efforts on surrounding ecosystem
BY: STACIE GREENE HIDEK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: JEFF JANOWSKI AND MICHAEL SPENCER
Sinking deep in mud. Heeding the warnings of gators. Hacking through invasive plants.
The toughest challenge in monitoring a local changing ecosystem is the environment itself.
“The marsh there is not the easiest place to work,” admitted Devon Eulie ’05, ’08M, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences. The marsh she refers to surrounds Battleship North Carolina, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington.
Eulie is the principal investigator on a project supporting a floodwater-mitigation project at the battleship site. Her Coastal and Estuarine Studies Lab is one of three UNCW labs responsible for physical and biological monitoring required to fulfill permit and funding requirements for the effort, called Living with Water.
Floodwaters often submerge both the entrance road and parking lot at the historic site, preventing visitors from easily accessing the state’s World War II memorial. Data from a tidal gauge by the neighboring Cape Fear Memorial Bridge shows flooding has increased more than 7,000% since the ship came to Wilmington in 1961.
Finding Solutions. Protecting Resources.
The Living with Water project will raise part of the parking area and return the rest to a more natural state, installing a wetland and tidal creek to redirect water. A living shoreline will help protect the area from wave and storm effects. Together, these are designed to create a more resilient landscape, and they make the project unique in both size and complexity when compared with others on the East Coast.
“It’s unusual to see resilience projects this large on public property,” Eulie said. Her lab primarily handles the water quality aspects of the monitoring and uses geospatial technology, such as drones and survey equipment, to map and track changes, such as in elevation.
UNCW’s Benthic Ecology Lab follows the health of the organisms that live at the bottom of the water. “Our part is the fish and crabs, and the small little things that they all eat that no one really cares about but form the base of the whole system,” said Martin Posey, professor of biology and marine biology.
“I think everybody cares about them,” said Troy Alphin, senior research associate with the lab. “They just don’t know that they care about them.”
The ecological side of things above water is the focus of Stacy Endriss and the Wetland Ecology and Management Lab. Her work focuses on invasive plant species. Much of the marsh area surrounding The battleship is home to phragmites, which form dense stands that quickly outcompete native vegetation for the necessary resources to thrive.
Creating a Living Laboratory
The three labs, along with Amy Long in UNCW’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Jenny Davis at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science lab in Beaufort, NC, are part of what they all hope will be a long-term collaboration to help guide resilience projects in the future.
Our role is to go in and get the data to show what it is at the start of construction and how things are changing over time.
-Stacy Endriss
Getting that data can be a challenge. The site is home to wildlife, perhaps most famously alligators, as well as soupy mud, thanks to a site dominated by fine particulates, and those phragmites, which can take a machete to get through. The labs follow strong protocols to ensure safety. They rely on kayaks or other small boats to explore the marsh and on reporting devices installed within reach of the State Employees Credit Union Memorial Walkway that surrounds the ship.
“They have a very light footprint on the landscape, which we really appreciate,” said Terry DeMeo, development director for the battleship and coordinator of the Living with Water project. “Once they're gone, you would never have known that they were there.”
But their work still leaves an imprint. When a group of schoolchildren visiting the site wondered about the work being done at the site, they called up Posey, he said. “We put it on the speakerphone and did an impromptu 15-minute lesson for these elementary school kids and their parents right there on the boardwalk.”
Older students also get the benefit, as the labs put undergraduate and graduate students at UNCW in hands-on positions of collecting samples, evaluating data and training fellow students. The professors say they all have or plan to teach classes at the battleship site, which is particularly useful because of the short commute and the challenges it illustrates.
The monitoring is “an opportunity to help people understand what some of the current impacts are on the coast in terms of rising sea levels and increasing trends in coastal flooding, and what might be happening in their home or in their neighborhood or down their street,” DeMeo said.
To extend the partnership beyond the three years required after the construction now underway, both sides are planning to extend the current project into an ongoing “living laboratory” for other researchers to use and for the community to learn from.
“Our hope Is that it’ll be a template for other communities to take this work and do similar projects,” Eulie said. “Anywhere coastal is going to continue to have flooding issues and so this is going to become more and more important.”
Scan, Print, Paint, Repeat
The Randall Library Makerspace recreates missing ship parts using 3D printing
BY STACIE GREENE HIDEK
UNCW has taken a key role in using cutting-edge technology to put a World War II-era ship back together.
The USS North Carolina served in every major naval offensive in the Pacific and has seen millions of visitors walk her decks in the decades since taking her place in the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington.
“Things fall off and disappear,” said Pete McWilliams, a volunteer for the battleship. “Visitors like to take souvenirs, and there were a lot of things missing from just when the ship was mothballed.” After the ship was decommissioned, it was used as something of a spare parts warehouse for ships still in service.
Volunteers such as McWilliams work with the battleship staff to ensure authentic restoration of the state’s World War II memorial. When adequate replacement parts can’t be found, they turn to more creative solutions.
Alyssa Wharton, the Randall Library Digital Makerspace coordinator, said the battleship reached out online to talk about the possibilities of 3D printing and scanning. “My goal is to provide people with realistic expectations,” Cole said. “A lot of people think that it's like Star Trek, and we're not quite there yet. But we still want to find ways to make it work.”
The volunteers and staff had already explored other possible ways to recreate missing parts. Some that need to stand up to daily handling by visitors must be cast from metal, and others need special handling because they are so large. But for smaller pieces that live out of reach of tour routes, 3D printing has been an ideal solution.
The volunteers worked with Cole to accurately scan examples of pieces that needed replacing (“It’s an art and a skill,” McWilliams said) and to evaluate printed samples in the tough ship environment. Although the battleship now is setting up its own makerspace where it can scan, print and paint replacement parts, Cole and Randall Library’s Digital Makerspace get much of the credit.
“That's really been the nice thing: having somebody that you can send an email to say, ‘What about this?’” McWilliams said about the collaboration. “Every visit we learned something more useful.”
More than $12 million in support for coastal and marine science programs and research initiatives has been contributed during Like No Other: The Campaign for UNCW.
