The Gulf of Maine is an international watershed in the North Atlantic stretching north from Provincetown at the tip of Massachusetts Bay in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to Cape Sable on the Bay of Fundy in the province of Nova Scotia in Canada. For over 13,000 years, the Gulf has been developed around access to the coast for fishing, trading, and recreation. Today, these coastal development patterns put the cultural landscapes, economies, communities, and aging infrastructure systems along the Gulf at risk.
Climate Futures on the Gulf of Maine uses place-based scenario planning to illustrate the risks, vulnerabilities, and plausible futures for ten infrastructure systems along the rim of the Gulf. Place-based scenario planning is a method of long-term strategic planning that creates representations of multiple, plausible futures that are used to inform decision-making in the present. While complementary to probabilistic models used to forecast future vulnerabilities, scenario-based planning shifts emphasis from statistical probability to ways of thinking about the future. The goal of place-based scenario planning is not to predict the most likely outcome, but to reveal biases and blind spots in complex and non-linear situations.
Climate Futures uses the medium of landscape representation to surface the cultural value systems embedded in existing infrastructural systems, and position landscape as a driver when evaluating design from individual infrastructures to the Gulf of Maine watershed.
Systems > Water
WATER
Water systems on the Gulf of Maine include public drinking water facilities and distribution systems, as well as natural and man-made reservoirs, dams, 1 pump stations, retention and detention ponds, stormwater management systems, water tanks, towers, and wells. These public and private systems provide clean drinking water to communities around the Gulf. 2 They also have unintended consequences. Freshwater runoff, dams, and development all affect the quality of water that enters the Gulf.
Water systems, especially wells in coastal areas, are increasingly at risk of flooding from rising groundwater tables and saltwater intrusion.2 Inland, prolonged summer droughts threaten reservoirs and ponds that provide fresh drinking water. Coastal and riverine flooding coupled with summer and fall drought require approaches to minimize evapotranspiration, filter water, and protect clean drinking water supplies.
Each step of existing water treatment processes have options for hazard mitigation. These include elevating or relocating pump stations and distribution systems out of flood zones; burying distribution lines; floodproofing intake, water treatment, storage tanks and power supplies; and providing redundant systems.3 These strategies for existing systems can be paired with nature-based solutions including riparian buffers, sustainable forestry management, and policies like conservation easements to protect drinking water supplies.4 As new systems are built, others may be removed. Obsolete structural infrastructures, like dams, can be removed to improve water quality and fish passage along the Gulf’s rivers.
1 U.S. Department of Transportation, “National Inventory of Dams,” Shapefile, February 7, 2025, nid.sec.usace.army.mil/#/.
2 In Massachusetts, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ACSE) estimates that there is $15.2 billion in drinking water needs and 335 high-hazard dams. See “Massachusetts Infrastructure Report Card,” American Society of Civil Engineers, January 2025, infrastructurereportcard.org/Massachusetts.
3 As seas rise, landward intrusion of saltwater pushes groundwater levels up and shifts the interface of fresh groundwater and saltwater inland. Sea level rise induced groundwater rise is expected to extend three to four times further inland than surface tidal water inundation from sea level rise. Jayne Knott et al., “Modeling Groundwater Rise Caused by Sea-Level Rise in Coastal New Hampshire,” Journal of Coastal Research 35, no. 1 (2019): 143–57.
4 The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides a comprehensive overview of public water systems and mitigation strategies. See Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Hurricane and Flood Mitigation Handbook for Public Facilities” (Washington, D.C.: Federal Emergency Management Agency, March 2022), www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_rsl_p-2181-hurricane-and-flood-mitigation-handbook-for-public-facilites_05282025.pdf.
5 A 2013 study by the Portland Water District performed a cost-benefit analysis comparing six scenarios to protect the Portland, Maine water supply. As a result of the study, the Water District invested in conservation easement purchases. The takeaway by the District was that, “a combination of riparian buffers, culvert upgrades, conservation easements, and sustainable management of forests are less expensive than building new filtration systems in most cases.” See “Natural Infrastructure: Investing in Forested Landscapes for Source Water Protection in the United States” (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 2013), www.manomet.org/wp-content/uploads/old-files/natural_infrastructure.pdf.