The Dune Protecting Artemis - Engineering With Nature (2024)

NASA was created by law with the signature of President Eisenhower in 1958. In 1961, NASA requested appropriations to purchase land on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida to support the Apollo Program, a place that would eventually be called the Kennedy Space Center. The broader Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral Complex now includes more than 215,000 acres of federally owned and managed land that is home to four federal organizations: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the National Park Services’ Canaveral National Seashore, and US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The system is also under stress. Hydrological modifications, nutrient loading, harmful algal blooms, shoreline erosion, and the exacerbating influence of climate change, sea level rise, and coastal storms are pressuring an already-vulnerable system. Seagrass has been decimated, with cascading effects for other species. More than 1,000 manatees have died in the system since 2020; two-thirds of those deaths were due to starvation. Seagrass and other aquatic plants are the food of manatees. An unexplained and rapid erosion event of the beach and dune near Space Launch Complex 46 in 2019 revealed a vulnerability that the US Space Force will address by constructing a hybrid dune (that includes a buried seawall) along that portion of the Cape, beginning in November 2022.

I first met Gian Basili, the Deputy State Supervisor (Florida) for Ecological Services with the USFWS, in August 2019. We shared an interest in developing natural infrastructure solutions for coastal problems. Gian invited me and Engineering With Nature to join a conversation about how natural infrastructure could support coastal resilience and the $5 billion rebuild underway at Tyndall Air Force Base, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Michael in 2018. (The great things that have and are being accomplished with natural infrastructure at Tyndall, through partnership, by the US Air Force, the USFWS, Jacobs Engineering, Engineering With Nature, and other organizations is a story for another time, but in the meantime see https://tyndallcoastalresilience.com/.)

As we looked, listened, and talked, the opportunities that floated to the surface of my thoughts included

• the value, progress, and learning achievable by four federal organizations collaborating on an integrated plan for coastal resilience that combines natural and conventional engineering
• the prospect of using nature-based solutions to simultaneously address environmental (e.g., nutrient-loading impacts) and physical hazards (sea level rise and coastal storms)
• developing true, multilayered solutions for comprehensive resilience by working both on the land and in the water
• applying the power of modern technology to develop a more complete and accessible understanding of conditions, processes, drivers, and the work and power of natural infrastructure

These and many other thoughts and opportunities are scribbled on the pages of my field notebook.

At the end of a long day in the field, we had the opportunity to see, up close, the Artemis Space Launch System. In a phrase, it was a notable experience. It was an impressive sight as it stood on Launch Complex 39B, which was used during the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. We drove past the rocket to the adjacent beach line to see the dune that NASA built as a coastal resilience feature—the dune that now protects Artemis. The 3.6-mile-long dune was constructed and planted with dune grasses in stages over a 10-year period, beginning in 2010, using 500,000 cubic yards of sand delivered to the site by truck. Both past and future action of the ocean and its waves were in evidence as we looked at the dune, beach, and across the island at an approaching stormfront. Nature is dynamic—it’s alive and powerful. It struck me that Artemis is indeed an apt name for a program protected by a dune. Artemis is the Greek goddess of nature and the hunt.