Kate McClure draws on her research and outreach work to help communities increase resilience
By Rona Kobell
Maryland Sea Grant Extension Specialist Kate McClure helps communities prepare for and adapt to coastal climate change using modern technologies. But she began her work studying how climate change impacted 55-million-year-old clams.
McClure, who majored in biology at William & Mary, undertook the work for her honors thesis. The clam, from the genus Venericardia, was abundant in its time—the Paleogene Period—and well preserved afterward in fossilized deposits. The climate during this time was extremely variable, just as it is today, making it an effective proxy for determining how species will fare with major temperature increases. She found that climate change was one factor in the evolution of Venericardia bivalves, which eventually became extinct.
There are different challenges now, as McClure works with humans who are very much alive and acutely interested in protecting their coastal properties from rising waters and unstoppable erosion. As a coastal climate specialist with Maryland Sea Grant, McClure had to build the program, which entailed in-person outreach to many communities on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Then, during the pandemic, she had to adapt her efforts to virtual meetings.
McClure held a fall webinar series that focused on climate change trends and online tools for finding related local information; this chart shows past and projected values for average daily maximum temperatures in Maryland.
The first webinar focused on temperature and precipitation trends in Maryland, as well as resources for county-specific climate information.
Graph showing average daily maximum temperature over time.
In the second webinar of the series, McClure looked at different sources of coastal flooding, including storms, rain, and sea level rise, and shared available tools for understanding local flood risks.
Image of a flat landscape. In the foreground is a flooded road with open water and marsh grasses to the left.
In the third webinar, McClure talked about strategies for reducing flood impacts at home and how to protect property, prepare households, and make communities more resilient.
Ditch on the side of the road that is filled with water.
As the world emerges from the pandemic, McClure said her goals include working with communities that may not have access to government services and rely on churches or nonprofits to receive information. Extension can help fill the gap with connections to scientists. They can also help communities secure grants to help stabilize shorelines or clean ditches.
“We have these low-lying communities that are experiencing more and more flooding. Many of the residents in those places have been underserved. I’m trying to help those communities figure out how to address this in an equitable way,” she said. “It’s not easy.”
Image of flooded streets in downtown Ocean City, Maryland.
Image of ditch on the side of a road. A man with his back towards the viewer, is mowing the grass along the ditch.
Piles of riprap with open water to the left and sandy land to the right.
Completely flooded road with green grass on either side. A grove of trees is in the distance.
Clockwise from top left: Flooding in Ocean City is often a headache for property owners there; Luther Cornish, 90, mows his ditch in Smithville to keep it clear and reduce flooding; flooded roads are common in some coastal areas of the Eastern Shore, especially at high tide; some property owners install rocks, known as riprap, to protect shorelines against wave action and erosion.
McClure said she wants to make sure that residents from underserved communities are included in the decision-making process early, especially because state and federal governments have limited funds they can disperse.
Raised in California and New Jersey, McClure’s introduction to the Chesapeake Bay came from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s professors, who are part of William & Mary and often lectured in her undergraduate courses. From there, she pursued her doctorate at Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center near Boston. While earning her doctorate, she worked at the New England Aquarium and the Museum of Science, both in Boston, explaining to visitors how storm drains directed pollution-laden water into Boston Harbor. That work helped McClure become more comfortable with the outreach part of Extension; when working with first-graders, she said, “You have to turn it up to 11. You have to go for it.”
Watching the teachers interact with parents and children helped her see best practices, though she was relieved she was not tasked with sleeping at the museum when the staff managed the scouting groups that spent the night.
For her dissertation, McClure examined rocky intertidal communities in the Gulf of Maine to study how species interact across broad geographic ranges. For this research, she turned to Nucella lapillus, a predatory whelk, examining how its diet, its shell, its competitiveness, and its predation changed as the temperature warmed. Warmer temperatures lead to ocean acidification, which make it harder for marine animals such as whelks to maintain a thick shell. Therefore, McClure’s examination of how N. lapillus fared in the Gulf of Maine, which is warming rapidly, could give scientists clues about how other organisms will fare in warming climates.
McClure is excited for two big challenges ahead. First, she is helping develop guidance for local governments on how to use the latest sea level rise projections developed by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The institution generates probabilistic sea level rise projections to help cities and counties plan how they build, and where.
“It’s a good role for Extension, trying to bridge that gap between the science and the information people actually need to make decisions,” she said.
Her second project is more personal. She and her husband welcomed a baby boy in October. McClure expects to be back at work in the new year, no doubt with a long to-do list.
In these three videos, Maryland Sea Grant Extension Coastal Climate Specialist Kate McClure shows how to use online mapping tools to view sea level rise, flood insurance maps, and the Critical Area for Maryland.
