Coastal Green Infrastructure Design and Construction

The internship will be offered during the Fall 2019 semester and will consist of seven one-day field-based internship experiences. Internship experiences will occur at different locations, within a one-hour radius of the DelTech-Stanton campus. Students will be responsible for their own transportation. The experiences will occur every other Friday during the 15-week semester and are anticipated to last approximately 10 hours, including travel time. Topics will include:

• Living shoreline design-build

• Riparian buffer functions and installation

• Rain garden design-build

• Native plant nursery - care and management of native plants

What is Coastal Green Infrastructure?

People don’t often think of riparian forests, coastal dunes, wetlands, oyster reefs, and other natural ecosystems as forms of infrastructure. However, this “green infrastructure” can prevent silt and pollutants from entering our coastal waters, stabilize eroding shorelines, provide protection from damaging hurricanes and floods, and improve water quality. In the absence of green infrastructure communities attempt to recreate these functions through traditional “grey infrastructure” projects, which consist of human engineered systems that are often costly to build and maintain. As an alternative, many communities are investing in building nature-based green infrastructure projects, such as living shorelines and constructed wetlands.