What Happens on the Land Affects Salem Sound

The Marblehead Conservancy invites all members, friends, and others to its Annual Meeting at Abbot Public Library, 3 Brook Road in Marblehead. Light refreshments will be provided. A brief business meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m. will be followed by a guest speaker, Barbara Warren of Salem Sound Coastwatch, addressing “What Happens on the Land Affects Salem Sound.” You can register to join in-person or via Zoom at tinyurl.com/2024-Conservancy.

Barbara Warren will share her extensive knowledge of Salem Sound and Marblehead with a particular focus on land-based initiatives. We all appreciate and enjoy Salem Sound’s magnificent natural resources – its open ocean, beaches, marshes, rivers, streams – but it is the land that sheds its water into them that determines their condition. What happens on the land affects the ocean.

With the mission to improve the water quality of Salem Sound, much of Salem Sound Coastwatch’s work takes place on the land that drains into the harbors and ocean. Warren will describe some of the projects and ways they work with communities to improve Salem Sound and its watershed. This will include Marblehead’s Forest River Conservation Area, Steer Swamp, Municipal Shipyards Resiliency Improvements Project as well as living shorelines, eelgrass and horseshoe crabs.

Barbara Warren is the Executive Director for Salem Sound Coastwatch, a regional non-profit that works to improve and protect the environmental quality of Salem Sound and its watershed. In addition, she serves as the Lower North Shore Regional Coordinator for the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Partnership. She has been with Salem Sound Coastwatch since 2003. She grew up in Montana but came to Massachusetts to attend Wellesley College and basically stayed. Warren has a master’s in Environmental Science from Antioch New England and a master’s in Education from Lesley University.

With Salem Sound Coastwatch and its partners, she has implemented programs that engage volunteers, including Salt Marsh Assessment, Marine Invasive Species Monitoring, Greenscapes, and Adopt a Beach. As a certified Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Provider, Warren focuses much of her work on climate change awareness and coastal resilience projects, working with Salem, Manchester, Marblehead, Beverly and Peabody. She spearheaded Salem Sound Coastwatch’s partnership with the City of Salem to construct the first living shoreline at Collins Cove. She has been working with the Town of Marblehead since 2018 on climate adaptation planning.