Has the Tide Come In?

July 17, 2018 – 6:26 AM

It is July so yes, I am spending a lot of time looking at tides and planning the right time to fish or find wide open beaches with tide pools for the children to play.  Additionally, there is an ongoing conversation about higher water levels in the Chesapeake Bay as well as the world.  I will leave the analysis to the experts, but I will throw in my two cents on the complexity of predicting natural systems.

My experience in natural resource predictions is one of imperfection and poor interpretation.   Most models of any natural system are incapable of capturing all of nature’s checks and balances.  It is not that nature “cares” if your land goes under water, there is no “balance” for what is right for humanity.  Drastic changes and shifts in any natural system like global sea level is complex and it has been stated by Frank Engler in the early days of conservation biology that, “Ecosystems are not only more complicated than we think, they are more complicated than we can think.”   There are volumes of text about both sea level rise and conservation biology, but I would not suggest you put down your Summer beach read in place of some reading on this subject.  You will only fall asleep and end up with a “book tan”.  No one wants that.

Ignoring any temptation to jump on a bandwagon to guide dramatic policy change in favor of any one outcome is not warranted.  Instead we should use humility as a guide and a conservative mind set to conserve our resources based on the recognition that we really do not know what the future will hold, and scientists and policy makers must take the predictions from special interests in measured stride. 

While I was not planning on spending three paragraphs on that subject, never the less it happened and if you wish to know more about sea level rise, shoot me an email and I will direct you to a few resources.  My intention this morning was to discuss if we were in a rising land market.  Here is my quick answer… Yes and No.  In the next few days, I will review where our team is seeing land values shifting across the region.

Thanks to the eight of you for reading as always!  Be well today.