thrice all american: Waterfront Property In Milton?

Waterfront Property In Milton?

· Posted Wednesday March 28, 2007 by jamie

I came across an interesting mashup yesterday via a posting on Grist. Seems someone combined some NASA elevation data with the Google Maps API to map, in one meter increments, what would be flooded if the sea level were to rise. Now you can go all “Al Gore” on your own hometown and see what happens when the sea level starts to rise.

The demonstrations in An Inconvenient Truth showed the results on Manhattan and Florida for a rise of 20 feet, so I chose to set the level at 6 meters for this embedded map of Tacoma. We live in a hilly area, so the impact is relatively small for the majority of land in the city. However, the tideflats take a huge hit, essentially covering up Fife and bringing the shoreline to Milton and Edgewood. Talk about a hit on the local economy… (Buzzing up to Seattle, I was able to set the flooding to a high enough level that Lake Washington connected with the Port of Seattle terminal.)

Eye opening. Seeing something like this on a local level really makes you take it to heart that much more. I’m going to try to avoid getting all preachy (though maybe I already missed the boat on that attempt), but it’s always good to have perspective on the impact that climate change can have.

To play with the map in full-screen mode, head on over to Flood Maps.

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