Living Shoreline Prototype Designs

Throughout 2024, we partnered with local community organization Eastie Farm to lead a group of CIVIC Climate Corps Fellows for a green jobs training program. We collaborated with the team of young trainees on all stages of implementation of a biomass-based living shoreline installation—designing, building, launching, and monitoring. We wanted to expose the fellows to our work approach of vigorous manual labor, hands-on problem solving, and learning by observation and participation.

Using what we learned in prototyping our floating wetlands, we began experimenting with biomass aggregations for living shorelines. Sticking to our materials and methods, and our elemental engineering approach, we shifted our focus to intertidal coastal implementation. Added buoyancy was no longer necessary, so our new generation of living shoreline prototypes could be nearly all biomass. The new challenge was to secure them down to the shore instead of keeping them afloat.