Climate Now: Erosion and the Boston Harbor Islands

It's Earth Week on The Common. And in honor of our home planet, we're bringing you a special series. Every day this week, we're exploring what climate change looks and feels like in Greater Boston, and how it's impacting our communities, right now.

Today's destination: Boston Harbor Islands

Perhaps you've seen some of the 30 Boston Harbor Islands from an airplane window, descending into Logan Airport. Or maybe you've visited one of the more popular islands on a weekend day trip from downtown Boston. This archipelago is made up of piles of deposited material, sculpted by melting and retreating glaciers, known as drumlins, and is one of the few drowned drumlin fields in the world. It's a unique environment ripe for outdoor recreation, and holds irreplaceable Indigenous creations and post-colonial historical artifacts.

The Harbor Islands are also eroding, and fast.

In this episode of The Common, we're in a boat with  Zoe Hughes and Duncan FitzGerald of Boston University and Marc Albert of the National Parks of Boston for a close-up look at how rising sea levels and increasingly intense storms are impacting the very existence of the Boston Harbor Islands, and all they hold.