4.4 Terrestrial Communities
Beach renourishment is often used as a coastal management strategy to restore shoreline, combat coastal erosion, protect coastal infrastructure, and to widen the beach in order to increase recreation opportunities. Dredge materials pumped from ofshore marine sands or maintenance of boating lanes and inlets are often the source of material for renour- ishment projects. Adding sand to the beach is often considered an ecologically preferred option for erosion defense but there are associated detrimental ecological efects (Speybroeck et al. 2006; Manning et al. 2013; Viola et al. 2013) when materials are randomly mixed sediments that do not match the particle size and content of the receiving areas; sediments have high con- centrations of organic solids; marine sediments have a high salt content; or there are high levels of contaminants in the material (Wnek et al . 2013) . Beaches near residential and commercial developments may be subject to raking or grooming to remove debris and trash or to improve aesthetics, especially during busy summer seasons. Beach grooming is likely to result in decreased species abundance and biomass because it damages or removes foraging resources (Dugan et al. 2003; Hubbard et al. 2013) . Nordstrom et al. (2012) note that there is less natural swale and dune development on beach areas subject to raking because wrack materials were removed. Pollution of aquatic systems has been linked to deformities in snapping turtle hatchlings and is suspected to be a contributing factor in nest failures (Wnek et al. 2013) . Onshore vehicles are also a source of fuel and oil contaminants that introduce pollution to small areas of sand and the subsurface invertebrate community. Vehicle use on the beach was found to have a signifcant negative efect on invertebrate abundance and diversity through compaction of the sand and interstitial habitats (Schlacher et al. 2008) . Vehicles driven on sandy beaches leave vehicle tracks that make it difcult for female sea turtles and hatchlings to travel between the water and nesting sites (Schlacher and Lucrezi 2010) . Inattentive drivers can kill turtles on the beach by running over them and illegal access by drivers into restricted beach areas can destroy shorebird nesting sites by crushing them or by disrupting nesting behavior. Unattended pets and children allowed to enter shorebird nesting areas also can destroy or disrupt nests. It is likely that future tropical storms and hurricanes will become more intense with higher wind speeds and larger waves. Combined with sea level rise, storm surges may exceed 100-year coastal foods much more frequently by the end of the century. As sea level rises, storms of a given magnitude reach higher elevations and produce more extensive areas of inundation (FitzGerald et al. 2007) . Climate change is expected to severely impact this habitat through inundation and erosion from rising sea levels and storm surge (DeWan et al. 2010; Karl et al. 2009; Band and Salvensen 2009) .
Te efects of sea level rise will be greater than the inundation caused by rising ocean waters because of the permanent or long-term loss of sand from beaches. Te loss results
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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