In the battle against climate change, nature can be a fickle partner.

As New Hampshire experiences more extreme weather events, rising tides and coastal flooding, scientists here are finding ways to adapt to those changes. Their efforts don’t get a lot of attention, but these small steps could have big impacts as climate change increasingly threatens the state’s ecology and economy.

Take the “living shoreline” projects researchers have created in three Seacoast locations, most recently at Cutts Cove off Market Street in Portsmouth. The goal of the joint undertaking by the state Department of Environmental Services and the University of New Hampshire’s Jackson Estuarine Lab in Durham is to restore natural shorelines and harden them against future storms and tidal surges.

“When we’re thinking about engineering practices along the coast, probably our best teacher is nature itself,” said Aidan Barry, a coastal resilience and habitat specialist with DES’s coastal program.

Rather than relying on man-made structures, researchers use native plants, rocks, sand and other organic materials to control erosion and protect the coastal habitat.

It’s the sort of approach that was called for in the federal government’s fifth annual Climate Assessment Report, released earlier this month.

The report held some grim forecasts for the escalating effects of climate change. But it also highlighted how communities are adapting to reduce the risks.

Among the suggested actions:

Upgrading stormwater infrastructure to accommodate heavier rain events.

Managing vegetation to reduce wildfire risks.

Changing agricultural practices to manage drought conditions.

Implementing nature-based solutions — such as restoring coastal wetlands or oyster reefs — to reduce shoreline erosion.

Wild geese chase

Grant McKown was doing his master’s thesis on the Cutts Cove living shoreline project in 2018. Now a coastal habitat research associate at the UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab, McKown monitors that site as well as two earlier projects at Wagon Hill Farm in Durham and North Mill Pond in Portsmouth.

Similar projects have proven successful in the mid-Atlantic states, McKown said. “They seem to recover a lot better from storms than either natural marshes or a really hardened shoreline,” he said.

After five to 10 years, McKown said, “They start to resemble natural salt marshes in the way that they function and the way they serve as habitat for fish and for birds.”

“Also, it looks way more aesthetically pleasing,” Barry said.

The researchers were eager to try the approach here. But New England’s harsher winters pose additional challenges.

“In the mid-Atlantic where it’s warmer, they have smaller tides,” Barry said. “They don’t have to deal with really frigid winters, where ice is a factor. That’s something our engineers and folks have really had to look at in terms of monitoring.”

They didn’t plan on the geese.

Project managers had first noticed some damage in late 2020. “We found that some of the grass had been pulled up, and we noticed it kind of looked crater-esque,” McKown said.

The damage coincided with the annual southward migration of Canada geese.

Sure enough, the geese returned each fall. They didn’t just nibble at the grass; they ripped the young plants up by the roots, leaving a moonscape of craters.

The new plants are pretty irresistible to geese, providing a lot of nutritional value with little effort, the scientists said.

“We’re pretty much setting up a salad bar for these geese,” DES’s Barry said.

It was frustrating, McKown said. “You’re trying to do all this stuff and you feel like you finally get over a hump and things look good for a couple of years. And then it’s another thing you didn’t even think about,” he said.

“It was a little devastating,” he said.

“Not only because as an ecologist, you want to see this project go right, but as a master’s student, you want to show good results, but halfway through your project, it kind of fell apart,” McKown said.

To make matters worse, one flock of geese took up residence in a restored park nearby. So now, McKown said, “It’s not just a November-December problem, it’s an all-year problem.”

The researchers decided to try to outfox the geese.

In May, about two dozen volunteers from DES, UNH and the community spent five days planting 8,000 plugs of low marsh grass. They also installed wooden snow fencing to discourage the geese from landing there and game cameras to keep an eye on the project.

It seems to be working. “They don’t like the fence at all,” Mc-Kown said.

Project leaders have also thought about encouraging people to walk their dogs in the area; they’ve noticed that geese seem to stay away from Wagon Hill Farm, a popular spot for dog walkers.

The goose attack had a silver lining, McKown said, helping to solve a puzzle that they hadn’t even anticipated. “Hopefully, our folly will be someone’s help,” he said.

Planning for climate change

The first living shoreline project here began in 2016, after the reconstruction of a bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery, Maine, to mitigate some of the impacts on the salt marsh, mud flats and shellfish habitat, Barry said.

“The idea is to compensate for that, we’re going to recreate what some of that natural habitat would be, while also protecting that coastal zone in a way that protects it from future erosion,” Barry said.

Adapting to climate change is now part of their planning.

“Thinking about sea levels rising, thinking about projects, that’s often something that needs to be considered in the coastal areas,” Barry said. “More water moving, more erosion.”

Rebecca Katz, a coastal resilience grant specialist at DES, said such projects are designed to build resilience, allowing the shorelines to recover after natural disasters or storm surges.

“Projects like this are an investment in the future,” Katz said. “They’re an investment in the ecosystem, in the community, in the shoreline.”

At Wagon Hill Farm, which fronts on U.S. Route 4 but backs up to the Oyster River and Little Bay, the rate of erosion was alarming, Katz said. “They were losing about 3 feet of coastline every five years,” she said.

Now that shoreline is coming back.

Barnacles are living on the rocks, and small fish populations are returning to these areas, Barry said. “It’s really recreating an ecosystem,” he said.

The success of the Wagon Hill Farm project, Katz said, “becomes an example, and people start to learn more from it. That creates this feedback loop of reaching for the better solution again and again, until they’re scalable.”

Conserve and learn

Through trial and error, UNH’s McKown said, researchers can learn something that will benefit future projects.

At Wagon Hill Farm, they realized they had to make sure the rocks holding back the tides weren’t too big, to prevent erosion behind them. At North Mill Pond, he said, “We may have to do a number of plantings to really get the vegetation established well.”

And at Cutts Cove? “We learned geese could be a problem,” he said.

“Do these individual projects make a huge impact? Probably not,” McKown said. But living shorelines, he said, “are really important to these really small sites that have a lot of value to people.”

DES’s Barry said what happens at the coastline will affect the state’s tourism industry and economy. But it’s also a source of pride for New Hampshire, he said.

“What we’re doing this for is thinking about the future, preparing for these changing sea level rise conditions, but also thinking about future generations living here,” he said. “Trying to keep those habitats in as pristine condition as we can, so that future people can really benefit and still enjoy living in close proximity to the coast.”

His DES colleague Katz said, that’s the mission of their agency. “It’s in the name of DES — we’re environmental services,” she said. “We’re not just doing projects like these to ensure the habitat but to ensure the longevity of all that live there — fish, animals, plants and people.”

Such efforts also create natural beauty, Katz said. “It may seem like a small benefit, but it really does add to the landscape,” she said. “You look down from the bridge or the highway and you can see this small area of marsh that’s been restored.”

Confronting climate change can feel overwhelming, but small projects such as these can have ripple effects, Katz said. “You just look at what you can change in front of you,” she said. “Every piece has a place in the puzzle.”

To help

Interested in volunteering for outdoor environmental volunteer projects in New England? Visit naturegroupie.org.

swickham@unionleader.com