Wellfleet Public Library

WELLFLEET PUBLIC LIBRARY'S WOMEN IN SCIENCE SERIES

Katie Castagno and Duck Harbor and the Herring River

For the past three years, Wellfleet's Duck Harbor Beach has experienced periodic overwash events on storm and astronomically-high tides. These near-monthly events have formed a two-acre washover fan of sand at the tidal breach. Regular inundation of salt water into the low-lying area behind the washover fan has killed approximately 120 acres of vegetation, the majority of which was cleared in 2023. The clearing has allowed salt marsh vegetation to begin to repopulate the previously-forested area. Duck Harbor has undergone several ecosystem transitions in the past two centuries, from an open harbor to a marsh to a forest. This presentation will explore how Duck Harbor has changed over time, what we are doing to monitor the changes, and what we might expect in the future. A natural analogue to the Herring River Restoration Project, Duck Harbor provides key insights into the process of tidal marsh restoration.

Katie Castagno is the director of the Land-Sea Interaction Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, MA. Katie's research focuses on the intersections among coastal resilience, salt marsh restoration, and sediment transport. Katie received a PhD in Geological Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography. Katie also holds an MA in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a BA in Environmental Geoscience from Smith College. Katie has previously worked as an environmental educator and elementary school science teacher across Cape Cod.