Dear DIPP Stakeholders,

We hope you are enjoying the start of summer! Below you will find the latest updates on various DIPP activities, including the Deal Island Shoreline project on Crowell Rd., ditch improvement efforts in Dames Quarter and Oriole, and NERRS activities being carried out in and around the local marshes. We also have some exciting news that as of this month, Liz Van Dolah will be the new DIPP Coordinator over the next year in an effort to help us develop the DIPP network into something more sustainable. Read more about what she will be doing below. You may also be interested in a number of new resources and DIPP research publications, links to which you can find below. As always, please let us know if you have any question, concerns, requests, or ideas to share with us (dealislandpeninsulaproject@gmail.com). We'd love to hear from you! 

Thanks,
The DIPP Team

Deal Island Shoreline Project Update

During the month of May, DNR staff conducted elevation and vegetation monitoring at the Crowell Road shoreline site and the adjacent control site south of the tidal creek. This baseline data will be compared to shoreline conditions following the dune restoration project to help determine project impacts. The project design is currently under review by State and Federal permitters. Construction is anticipated to begin in Fall 2019. 

To learn more about the monitoring work being carried out on the shoreline, please visit DNR's Resiliency Project Highlights page. If you have additional questions or concerns about the shoreline project, please get in touch with Nicole Carlozo, MD-DNR.

Photo Credit: MD-DNR

Update on Ditch Assessment and Improvement Activities

The Maryland State Highway Administration will provide flaggers and other safely equipment during the time that the contractor is onsite performing the work. We will keep you informed of future developments as they become available. 

This project will address a clogged ditch that runs parallel to Deal Island Road, and which has caused repeated nuisance roadway flooding on Hodson White Rd. in Dames Quarter. This flooding is particularly problematic during heavy rain events (as photographed above). 

This study is being conducted to identify hotspots in the ditch networks in Dames Quarter and Oriole -- two areas previously identified as prone to ditch-flooding on roadways. The outputs of the study will be a valuable resource for garnering project implementation support in the future. 

News from Monie Bay NERRS-MD

• Field Season is here! CBNERR-MD staff will be out in full force this summer monitoring the Deal Island Shoreline Project, our Thin Layer Placement Study, Water Quality, Marsh Birds and more!  If you see us out and about, say hi! For more information about our monitoring efforts, contact Kyle Derby, Research Coordinator at: kyle.derby@maryland.gov. 

• CBNERR-MD completes design studio with UMD's School of Architecture:  CBNERR-MD completed a year long project with the University of Maryland to develop concept designs for a new research field station off of Drawbridge Road.  The project is intended to showcase Maryland's Coast Smart construction guidelines and low impact design techniques.  The full report is available here online.

• Shoring Up Resiliency Through Education (SURE) wrapped up its first year of a three year effort to provide teacher training and environmental education experiences to middle and high school students in the area. The 2018-2019 session wrapped up on May 28th with a teacher debrief and celebratory skipjack ride with Stoney Whitlock, a cultural heritage representative in the SURE project.

To date, DIPP has been largely supported by external grant funding for short-term research projects and has been directed by partners at the University of Maryland and Department of Natural Resources. These strategies -- while valuable in establishing a robust collaborative network of diverse stakeholders and creating momentum for projects like the Deal Island shoreline restoration work -- are not sustainable in the long-run in support the Deal Island Peninsula area, particularly without more established local leadership.

Over the next year, Liz will be developing opportunities to enhance the capacity for more local leadership within DIPP and will exploring mechanisms to support the Partnership through more sustainable approaches. As part of this work, she also will be developing a process for continued collaborations through regularly-scheduled community conversations to explore partner-identified topics of interest, re-instituting the monthly newsletter, and retooling the website. She will be working closely with the DNR-NERRS to develop opportunities to enhance collaborative work between the Monie Bay Reserve partners and Deal Island Peninsula communities -- both which play an important role in supporting the social and ecological resilience of the Peninsula. If you have ideas on how to help sustain DIPP, would like to be involved in these conversations, or have questions, please get in touch with Liz (vandolah@terpmail.umd.edu).

New Resources on the Website 

Check out links to several new resources available our resource page. 

• Maryland Directory (1878): Access historic records from Somerset County and the Deal Island Peninsula area through this Maryland Directory, published in the late 19th century. Available information includes family names, occupations, price of land and expected crop yields, and descriptions of the communities of the Deal Island area and other establishments around Somerset County. 

• Faith and Flooding: How Sea Level Rise Threatens America’s Houses of Worship (Climate Central 2019): Read this newly-published report of how churches may be impacted by flooding in the future, and strategies for reducing these impacts.
• Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (Union of Concerned Scientists 2018): Explore the potential impacts of chronic flooding on coastal property values. 
• FloodIQ: A new mapping tool available from the First Street Foundation that enables you to examine parcel-level hazards and risks to property and property values. 

New Publications from DIPP Research Activities

• Enhancing socio-ecological resilience in coastal regions through collaborative science, knowledge exchange and social networks: a case study of the Deal Island Peninsula, USA (Michael Paolisso, Christina Prell, Katherine Jo Johnson, Brian Needelman, Ibraheem Khan, Klaus Hubacek 2019)  

• Now available for download online: Cultural Heritage and Adaptation Pathways, PhD Dissertation Thesis (Elizabeth Van Dolah 2018)