Learning from Living Shores: Coastal Change, Risk and Community on the North Carolina Coast
20 May 2026
In this blog, Coast-R co-leads Briony McDonagh and Stuart McLelland reflect on a recent trip to the North Carolina coast where they saw a range of Living Shoreline projects in action.
In April 2026, we were lucky enough to spend a week at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), where we were hosted by colleagues at the Center for Marine Science (CMS). Our visit formed part of the strategic global partnership between University of Hull and UNCW, while also contributing to ongoing conversations across the Coast‑R Network about coastal risk, adaptation, and the social and environmental consequences of living with rapid shoreline change.
Image caption: Sandbagged condominiums close to the Fort Fisher revetment
Beyond teaching classes and taking project meetings about University of Hull projects SUDSlab and Risky Cities, the trip offered an invaluable opportunity to explore the hugely dynamic 300-mile North Carolina coast and witness first‑hand how coastal communities on the US Atlantic seaboard are responding to sea level rise, coastal erosion, and increased inundation risk – issues that resonate strongly with coastal regions in the UK and beyond.
Image caption: Storm-damaged pier at Carolina Beach
Image caption: Beach nourishment at Kure Beach
Within a short drive of Wilmington, we encountered sharply contrasting approaches to shoreline management. We observed an active beach nourishment scheme at Carolina Beach, visited the Fort Fisher revetment – completed in 1996 to slow further erosion of the Civil War fort – and saw smaller, ad hoc sandbagging efforts designed to protect condominiums.
For Coast‑R, the most valuable experiences came from visiting multiple living shoreline projects along the North Carolina coast and the Cape Fear River. Living shorelines, as well as coastal rewilding, are types of Nature-based Solution (NbS).
Rather than relying on conventional ‘hard’ coastal defences, these projects work with natural processes and materials, using marsh grass, oyster reefs, and coir logs to stabilise shorelines, reduce erosion and enhance habitats and ecosystem services. Key examples included the Battleship North Carolina Living with Water project and Fort Macon State Park Living Shoreline.
Living shorelines are often presented as technical interventions, but what became immediately clear during site visits was the extent to which they are also social and political projects. Decisions about materials, locations, property rights and long‑term maintenance shape who benefits from protection, who bears residual risk, and whose values are prioritised. These are familiar questions for University of Hull researchers working on the rapidly eroding East Riding of Yorkshire coast, where adaptation strategies must negotiate between private property, public access, heritage and ecological change.
Seeing living shorelines in action provided valuable points of comparison and raised important questions about transferability between coastal systems.
Beyond Wilmington, the visit extended north-east along the coast to the Outer Banks and Down East, two regions experiencing some of the most rapid coastal erosion in the United States. These low‑lying barrier islands and mainland communities are on the frontline of sea level rise, storm surges and shoreline retreat. Travelling through these landscapes, we encountered a coast where the impacts of environmental change are starkly visible: damaged dunes, houses on stilts, threatened historic buildings and communities adjusting to the rapidly shifting land-sea interface.
In the Outer Banks, the fragility of barrier island systems was particularly evident. Infrastructure frequently intersects with dynamic coastal processes, producing cycles of damage, repair and debate about long‑term viability. Here, risk is not an abstract future scenario but a lived condition, one that structures everyday decision‑making for residents, planners and policymakers alike. Similar themes have emerged in Coast‑R research in the UK, where managed retreat, delayed intervention and contested responsibility create uneven experiences of risk and security.
Down East presented a different, though equally powerful, set of stories. Many communities here have deep historical ties to fishing, maritime labour and place‑specific ways of life. Rapid erosion and land loss threaten not only homes and livelihoods, but also cultural memory and identity.
Image caption: The ‘Welcome to Down East’ sign
Conversations with local residents and heritage volunteers underscored how coastal change can feel cumulative and relentless. These dynamics echo findings from Changing Coast East Riding, where long histories of erosion shape how people understand loss, belonging and adaptation.
The visit to UNC Wilmington reinforced our collective commitment to comparative, international learning. While the regulatory, environmental and cultural contexts of North Carolina and the UK differ, the challenges faced by coastal communities are strikingly similar. Rising seas, accelerating erosion and increasing exposure to extreme events are forcing difficult conversations about protection, retreat and transition. By sharing experiences across coastlines, researchers and practitioners can better understand how different governance frameworks, knowledge systems and cultural values shape responses to risk.
As Coast‑R continues to connect research on erosion, adaptation and coastal futures, this visit offered both inspiration and provocation. Living shorelines demonstrate the potential of working with coastal processes rather than against them, but they also remind us that adaptation is always situated, embedded in particular histories, geographies and power relations. Effective coastal adaptation cannot rely on technical solutions alone: instead, understanding how people interpret risk, remember past coastal change and imagine future coastlines is essential if interventions are to be legitimate, durable and socially equitable.
Image caption: Harker’s Island looking towards Cape Lookout and the Core Banks National Seashore in the Outer Banks
The rapidly changing landscapes of the Outer Banks and Down East starkly underscore the urgency of attending to these human dimensions of coastal change.
Learning from these places strengthens the Coast-R Network’s collective capacity to think critically, comparatively and creatively about coastal futures. As environmental change accelerates, such exchanges are vital – not to replicate solutions wholesale, but to deepen understanding of what it means to live, plan and care for coasts under conditions of persistent risk.
