director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems, complains
that there is little cooperation between city agencies affected by climate
change, and long-range planning is often the first thing cut from budg-
ets that need to be slashed. Federal action has been nonexistent, with
the Bush administration and Congress refusing to commit to anything
more than redundant studies. But Jacob notes sardonically, “Whether
Congress wants to address it or not, the sea level will rise.”
LOSING THEBAY
According to the New York Times, “Some have said that [Jamaica Bay’s
marsh] islands, rich with large and varied populations of birds and
other wildlife, may largely disappear by 2020 if the causes are not
found and remedies not applied.” Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior
research scientist at NASA Goddard and also a professor at Columbia
University, says the MEC project confirmed for the first time that
Jamaica Bay’s alarming wetlands loss is in part due to global warming.
“Our wetlands researchers realized that something was happening out
there that went beyond the usual stresses on this highly manipulated
ecosystem,” Rosenzweig said. “It’s very complex, because there has
been an interruption of sediment to the marshes, due to dredging for
boat channels. Some people think the marshes are dying for reasons
other than global warming, but we have documented with aerial pho-
tographs that climate change contributes to the loss by basically inun-
dating the wetlands.”
Jamaica Bay has been losing its marshlands at a rate of 3 percent a
year since 1994, according to a Columbia University study, and 38 per-
cent of marsh vegetation has disappeared since 1974. The construction
of Kennedy Airport, built on marshland beginning in the 1940s, and
other development was a major blow to the wetlands, though it
remains one of the largest coastal ecosystems in New York State. The
Bay was protected as the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in 1972 and
became part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National
Recreation Area (which also includes New Jersey’s Sandy Hook).
Federal protection has done nothing to prevent what appears to be
an inexorable loss of land, which is dramatically illustrated in a series
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