"At nearly 150 acres, the Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro was one of the largest and most infamous in all of Latin America. Now it’s a mangrove forest teeming with life.
Decommissioned 11 years ago, between 1970 and 2012 the dump, bordering Rio’s famous Guanabara Bay, received 80 million metric tonnes of trash from the area’s Gramacho neighborhood.
Now, a public-private partnership led by the Rio Municipal Cleaning Company has returned the area to nature, specifically mangroves, one of the most valuable of all ecosystems.
Planting 24 acres of mangroves at a time, today the forest stretches out more than 120 acres and is the largest mangrove area of the bay.
“Before, we polluted the bay and the rivers. Now, it’s the bay and the rivers that pollute us,” a lead official on the project told Africa News. “Today, the mangrove has completely recovered.”
Other organizations have taken action to restore mangroves along the bay as well. The non-profit Ocean Pact funded the Green Guanabara Bay Project which successfully restored 12.5 hectares or around 25 acres of mangroves.
According to some estimates, 1 acre of mangrove forests can store more carbon in roots and soil than 4 acres of even the most biodiverse rainforest, making them paramount to any world climate mitigation strategy.
Furthermore, their impressive lattice work of roots and insane durability means that storm surges impacting mangroves lose about 66% of their kinetic energy without even destroying the trees.
Lastly, coastal fishing communities, in [four] words, cannot exist without mangroves. They act as nurseries and perfect habitat for all kinds of fish and crustaceans that small-scale fishermen rely on for their daily bread."
On 20 October, a storm hit the coasts of northern Germany and caused a very rare weather phenomenon, namely a storm low tide in the North Sea and a storm surge in the Baltic Sea.
A storm low tide is a very rare type of event that occurs when a strong to stormy south-easterly to easterly wind blows and intensifies the low tide in the North Sea and the Elbe, but causes a storm surge in the Baltic Sea.
Hamburg with a storm low tide
The long-lasting wind pushes the water onto the open North Sea and pushes the water so far away that the seabed can be seen over long stretches. The Baltic Sea, on the other hand, receives more water, a storm surge, which is then pushed inland.
Kiel on the Baltic Sea, on the other hand, had a storm surge and where the yellow buoys are there is the quay wall. And here the water was not yet at its highest level.
This event has only happened twice since the turn of the millennium.
The Surprising Symbiosis: How Baby Fish Thrive in Storm Surges
Climate change has us all on our toes, especially when it comes to hurricanes and storm surges. Often seen as devastating natural disasters, these weather phenomena actually offer an unusual silver lining for juvenile tarpon and snook fish. Yup, you heard that right. While humans loathe the deadly impact of storm surges, recent studies have shown that young tarpon and snook leverage these natural…
I will always remember you as a rainy ending to the sunniest of the days.
When it was sunny,we both glowed and smiled,we were happy(insert taylor swift).
But when rain came,it didn’t come as a storm to destroy us,it wasn’t a stormy ending, we didn’t hurt each other,nor did we try to. But the rain came, bringing along with it, the melancholy.
It wasn’t a sad ending in any way,but it wasn’t the ending I wanted
Wishing all Florida spoonies a safe evacuation or hunkering down for the hurricane. Even if the storm is category 1 by landfall, it will take category 3 (maybe 4) storm surge with it no matter what. If you're in the path of the surge, get out if you can. If you can't, prepare as best you can and don't forget to charge your electronics! Stay safe everyone, my thoughts are with you.