Maryland DNR Photo
Point Lookout State Park Complex Manager Dawn Letts tries out one of the University of Maryland virtual reality projects for Point Lookout. Photo by Catherine Madsen/UMD Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability
By Joe Zimmermann, science writer for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources
University of Maryland projects highlight adaptive management to sea-level rise and other changes
Maryland 2025 - You’re on a walkway in a park. You can see trees, a road, a marsh and a coastline against a vibrant blue sky all around you.
Then, you hear the toll of a bell. The marsh expands, the water edges up the grass. Another bell and the water creeps up to the base of the roadway. Eventually, when you look down, it’s under your feet, the raised walkway that once snaked through greenery is now surrounded by water.
Each sound of the bell represents 10 years passing, allowing viewers to see the effects of climate change and rising sea levels in a virtual space all around them. What you’re seeing is part of a series of projects by landscape architecture students at the University of Maryland, College Park to use virtual reality to visualize climate change at Point Lookout State Park, as well as possible adaptations to shifting conditions.
“When you see the water come under you, and hear the bird sounds turn to wave sounds, I think it helps people understand [climate change] in a different way,” said Nico Drummond, a landscape architecture major who was part of the team that designed the project that used the tolling bell.
The work began when Maryland Department of Natural Resources staff approached the university’s Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability program about opportunities to highlight the effects of climate change in the state.
Chris Ellis, a landscape architecture professor, said the class wanted to look at a particular state park and landed on Point Lookout State Park as a fitting site. Located at the southernmost tip of St. Mary’s County at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, Point Lookout is susceptible to sea-level rise and other effects of a changing environment. Sea levels could rise by 1.5 to 2.5 feet at the park over the next 25 to 50 years.
The class split into groups, with each one looking at a different area of the park and how it could change in the coming decades.
“The students were looking at the park from a large scale—what are the changes going to be in terms of sea level rise,” Ellis said. “We started thinking, ‘What are the problems associated with that? And I’ll tell you, as we went through the semester, it was more like ‘What are the opportunities that we can take advantage of? Because as the change happens, there are actually some really interesting things that may come from that.”
The student groups looked at a range of solutions which both protected the park land while also offering new opportunities for recreation. Raised walkways crossed areas where wetland buffers allowed for marsh migration, and kayak trails pass by living shorelines and floating wetlands. Boardwalks contain educational panels about the helical piers that are adjustable for rising waters and oyster reefs in Lake Conoy serve as living breakwaters to protect the marsh.
The projects were focused on keeping the park adaptive and accessible to people, even under changing conditions.
“We were excited to host this virtual reality visioning project at Point Lookout,” said Ranger Jonas Williams, director of planning for the Maryland Park Service. “The students did a phenomenal job illustrating how the park may change in the future, giving park visitors a chance to see what climate change could mean for this unique and vital landscape. Projects and partnerships like this help the Park Service engage the public in understanding risks and opportunities, while guiding planning and adaptation efforts not only at Point Lookout State Park but across other at-risk parks in the years ahead.”
The projects will be viewable online on Meta Quest TV, which streams virtual reality content.
As part of the planning for the project, which took place over the spring semester, students visited Point Lookout and got to see the areas they spent the semester designing projects for. Eashana Subramanian, a landscape architecture major with a minor in sustainability studies, said she had been to the park as a child with her parents and appreciated the chance to come back and put forward ideas about the park’s future.
“It was really meaningful that I got to work on this place that I’ve visited too,” she said.
