Sinking Sites: GTM Research Reserve

If you were ever curious about what the real, untouched Florida looked like before the resorts and sunburned tourists, all you have to do is stop by the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve - the GTM Research Reserve, for short. The GTM Research Reserve is open to the public year-round to walk or bike trails, have a picnic, fish, or even get married! Along the trails are some fun finds such as the remains of a shipwreck that washed up on the beach in the Reserve, as well as several signs about the people of the past that have stood in the same place as you. Some past uses of the site include a Timucuan village, a British indigo plantation, and Spanish plantations and homesteads. The main mission of the Reserve nowadays is to be a place where scientists can come conduct research for the benefit of the scientific community and the general public. The GTM Research Reserve has been a major contributor to archaeological findings and knowledge as there are so many sites on the property, one could consider the whole place one big archaeological site!

FPAN has found particular interest in the Shell Bluff Landing site. This one spot of land has been occupied for roughly 6,000 years! Because of this, the site contains artifacts from the Timucuan people as well as Spanish colonists. As part of FPAN's Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida) program, archaeologists including Emily Jane Murray, have been monitoring the erosion of the site and cataloging any artifacts found due to the erosion. The problem is that Shell Bluff Landing is not eroding slowly, it's going very rapidly. The soil is being swept into the water at a rate of approximately 50 centimeters a year (or if you are like me and have no reference for the metric system, about 19 inches a year). During a one-year period, over a foot of soil will be taken into the river systems and out to sea along with countless artifacts. While the archeologists monitoring the site are cataloging as many artifacts as they possibly can, it is essentially impossible to find them all.  

Images through time taken by FPAN staff to document the erosion at Shell Bluff Landing: from top left clockwise: before Hurricane Matthew, after Hurricane Matthew, after Hurricane Irma, recent monitoring trip.

So what’s the culprit? Can we stop it? Will this affect my beautiful beach home along A1A? To no one’s surprise, the culprit is partially due sea-level rise, and thus the greater villain that is climate change. At the end of the day, the issues being faced here are a major compounding of smaller issues that are being worsened by sea level rise and climate change. It is still up in the air if we can stop it, but we can certainly take measures to slow it or merely mitigate the damages (It will also probably affect your beach house, that’s why the home owner’s insurance is so high). Steps we, as a community, can take to help fix this ongoing historical disaster is to volunteer with groups like the Heritage Monitoring Scouts to go to sites and measure for erosion and even make a potential archeological find or by planting native or approved plants along fragile shorelines to slow erosion. Though to fix the greater problem of climate change we must take bigger steps on a state and national level to slow the damage. It may seem daunting, but we can save the past from the problems of the modern age with determination and cooperation.

For more information about the GTM Reserve click here.

For more information about Heritage Monitoring Scouts click here.

Words and text by Emily Hulet, FPAN Intern, unless otherwise noted.