[piano intro] [upbeat music] ♪ [serene music] - [Narrator] In nature, major shifts are often easiest to recognize at the largest scale.

But if you zoom in, sometimes the smallest indicators, the ones right under our noses or in our own backyards, tell the most significant stories.

[plaintive music] Over the last several decades, the rate of Earth's changing climate has been accelerating and its effects are being felt across the globe.

The last eight-year period was the warmest since record-keeping began.

And in 2021, a total of 25 countries experienced their highest annual temperature ever recorded.

Glaciers and sea ice are melting faster.

Sea level is rising, precipitation patterns are shifting and the impact all around the world is becoming more and more apparent.

[bear growls] [indistinct chattering] - We're here in front of the #*holy fire, which has already burned more than 10,000 acres.

- A lot of our families have been displaced, homes have been destroyed.

- Panama City beach, the storm has turned very, very violent, these trees back here, just shaking.

- What did we do to you?

[mellow music] - [Narrator] But even as the perils of a warming planet continue to be revealed, new possibilities are emerging from around the world that offer hope, for not only addressing immediate dangers, but also mitigating human impact.

- [Woman] This is only the beginning of the beginning.

- [Narrator] And extending the life of the planet.

- We share a common goal.

- [Narrator] But a global redirection of this magnitude can't happen unless we start first by looking locally, with how we are living, working, and being.

And what more can be done right here at home?

[mellow piano music] North Carolina is rich in natural wonder and diversity, stretching from the mountains of Appalachia to the windswept dunes of the Outer Banks.

Like all shorelines, North Carolina's is dynamic and ever shifting.

But in recent years, changes here are happening faster than before.

Increased flooding and erosion is wreaking havoc on vulnerable low-lying towns across the state.

And coastal communities are taking the brunt.

In many cases, solutions adopted in the past are not only proving ineffective.

They are increasing the rate of destruction to the only buffer we have, nature itself.

[distant bird cawing] Picture the North Carolina coast.

Your first thought might be a sandy beach, but the bulk of North Carolina shorelines are actually along estuaries, a lattice patchwork of bays, sounds, and salt marshes.

These shallow waters are crucial for juvenile fish, oysters and clams.

And of course, the fishing industry, which brings in millions of dollars a year.

Estuaries are also home to many North Carolinians who wanna be close to the water.

But like the sandy beaches iconic to North Carolina, shorelines along estuaries are feeling the pressure of sea level rise.

And the communities that live there are trying to figure out how to save their property from an ever-encroaching ocean.

Linda and Kurt Wargin have lived in Newport, North Carolina for close to 30 years.

- Being right on the water is just, it's a moving picture every day.

- [Narrator] But over the years, they've seen their property erode at a faster pace.

- We saw maybe at least 10 to 15 feet of loss for us.

Now, that's over 20, 25 years, but it was marching, it was moving.

- Erosion is a natural process but it's happening more and more frequently because we've had a lot more storms, a lot more frequency and intensity of storms.

As sea level rises, we are seeing higher water levels than we have in the past.

So we're seeing erosion along the entire length of the shoreline.

- [Narrator] In the past, the default solution for homeowners in the face of erosion has been coastal hardening, installing a bulkhead or a rock wall revetment, essentially a line of rocks dumped along the shore.

The designs vary, but the goal of these structures is the same, hold the line against the ocean.

And they often fail.

- We had a neighbor down here.

We'd only been here about three years when we had a big hurricane, and he had a wall, and it took the whole wall out and it took half of his yard out.

And so that just left a terrible memory in our minds.

- [Narrator] But that's not the only problem with these structures.

When you harden a shoreline, it damages the ecosystem.

- When that wave energy comes from the sound and it hits a hardened structure, that energy has nowhere to go.

So then it comes back with it, and in the process, it takes away all of that habitat in front of a bulkhead, a sea wall or a riprap revetment.

- [Narrator] Up to 90% of the species that make up North Carolina's commercial fishing industry depend on estuaries at some stage in life.

Without that habitat, they won't survive.

- So they have no place to hide, no place to eat, so it really affects all of the organisms that are in that location.

- [Narrator] Across the country, coastal communities have been hardening their shorelines to protect against erosion for years.

Research shows that overall, we've hardened 14% of our country's shores.

In urbanized areas like New York City, it's more like 50%.

But over the last few years, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and other groups have been promoting an alternative to hardening.

They're called living shorelines because they're made oyster shells or other natural materials that can become habitat for ocean organisms.

- So a living shoreline is something that's very nearshore, but offshore a little bit so that it attenuates the wave energy instead of deflecting it.

And it slows the wave energy down.

They perform much better during hurricanes because in a hurricane, the high water's gonna be over the top of the structure, still gonna slow some of the energy down, but it's not getting battered the way like a wall does.

It also, as the wave slows down over the top of the structure, the settlement drops out and you can actually build the marsh and make the land more resilient on its own.

So you're allowing the coast to heal itself.

[distant bird cawing] - [Narrator] With help from the Coastal Federation, Linda and Kurt installed a living shoreline in 2017.

- It works.

- It works, I mean, 'cause we've seen, even after the storm, there might have been half a dozen bags that got tumbled off.

Easy to pick 'em up and put 'em right back on top.

And that was it.

It stayed, and our dock was nearly destroyed.

- I love that the oysters grow on it and then they clean the water too.

So it's growing all by itself and it's cleaning and it's protecting.

- The more projects that we build, the more people see them.

Once we build one, the neighbors will come out and they'll want one as well, so we're seeing this domino effect of installation of living shorelines which is gonna help to protect our coast much better than hardened shorelines like bulkheads.

- [Narrator] Living shorelines are still rare in comparison to hardened shorelines, but the tides are shifting in North Carolina where the Coastal Federation has helped build over 10,000 feet of living shorelines over the last two years.

- [Woman] We met with so many landowners that would talk about where the shoreline was generations ago, where it was in their childhood, and their wanting their children, their grandchildren to still have a coastline.

And so they're very interested in wanting to protect it, wanting to protect it in the most environmentally sound way possible.

- It's such a respite.

You know, this is a getaway.

Put things down and just take your shoes off and go walk out in the water.

[mellow music] - [Narrator] In Wilmington, a senior coastal scientist draws inspiration from a lifelong love of the ocean, as she works to protect North Carolina waters for future generations.

[bright strings music] - I'm happy if I'm in the water every day.

It's really about being part of something that's much, much bigger than ourselves.

Surfing for me is inspiration for the work that we do.

Hey, I got your message.

My name is Tracy Skrabal.

So what you got going on?

I am a scientist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

I know it has to do with your work in Brunswick County and some storm water.

I'm a mom, and hopefully a good friend to some.

Okay.

So what I thought would be a lot of fun.

I think we'll go out and see some of the projects that we've done.

So this area is pretty much a classic urbanized barrier island, and the wetlands that once fringed these areas pretty much have eroded away.

I am an optimist by nature.

That said, we are working on coastal protection in a very challenging time.

The local rise in sea level in my community, New Hanover County, has doubled in the last 15 years over the previous 50 years.

Since 2013, the rate has really taken off.

And if you look at local tide gauge data, for the next 30 years, it's close to half a foot.

There have always been hurricanes, but what used to be called a 100-year event is now something we might see every few years.

If you drove down the road, you saw people's belongings all up and down the street.

And that's true up and down all of our barrier islands.

And really, I think the urgency of the situation on our local coastal region has really been a factor in how I approach my work.

There's no question.

It's not a matter of if, it's how much and what are we gonna do about it?

[upbeat music] So we are standing in the front of Bradley Creek Elementary School in New Hanover County.

One of our favorite projects is Bradley Creek Elementary.

We partnered with them to see if we could take all the storm water, put it into the ground into a series of stormwater wetlands, large rain gardens, rather than it going into the drains and out into the headwaters of Bradley Creek.

If you walk in there right now, you'll get your feet wet, but you won't get your feet wet in the parking lot where they used to have flooding and the teachers had to take their shoes off to get out of their cars to get to school.

Airlie Gardens experienced some erosion from boat wakes.

So we partnered to construct basically an oyster reef along the eroding edge of their coastal marsh.

If you could see below the water here, you would see a really healthy fringe of natural oyster reefs.

Living shorelines really allow you to preserve what we call the sacred cow of the estuaries, and that is the coastal marshes, which is so critical for water quality, for habitat.

And what we're learning is that they sequester huge amounts of carbon.

So we need to do everything we can to protect these natural areas.

They're going to be the best chance of mitigating climate change that we have.

I've always been dedicated to protecting this beautiful resource that we have.

But for me, being out there reminds me that this is not given.

When I come out here, I see that nature is miraculous and gives us many tools to adapt.

About 15 years ago, I became a cancer survivor.

And when you've been given a second chance, things that are smaller, that don't matter, fall away, and things like being passionate about protecting the environment are inspiring every day.

So, being out here really inspires me and gives me a lot of energy to do what I can working with these communities to help them get ready.

Now, this is not guaranteed.

It's such a cool place, for our children and for our children's children.

Beautiful.

We all have to do something to pay it forward.

We have to do our part to protect it.

[mellow music] [serene music] - [Narrator] Thanks in part to the work of groups like the Coastal Federation, nature-based solutions are paving the way forward in the fight against climate change, But it's not just fish and other marine species that count on critical marsh habitat for survival.

- [Marae] These birds are really secretive.

It's winter, they're not responding to callbacks or anything like that.

So we have to kind of push them into our nets.

[women cooing, clapping] - [Evan] Oh, there's one in.

Wait, oh, there's another one!

[indistinct chattering] Here old buddy.

- [Marae] Saltmarsh sparrows are super hard to find because they're essentially the same color as the grass.

Orange-brown, tan-colored birds, medium-sized sparrow, but with fairly large bills, really adorable, and quiet.

In the summertime, they'll call and sing.

Really, we just hear them making, like, small vocalizations during the winter.

[both laughing] - Pretty much.

[both laughing] There you go.

- [Narrator] These tiny birds may soon be considered endangered.

They rely on coastal marsh ecosystems to thrive, and spend their winters in North Carolina's salt marshes, the same marshes that humans depend on as a buffer against the sea.

But those marshes are in danger of disappearing.

- The saltmarsh sparrows ranges from Maine down to Virginia about for breeding, and then Virginia down to Florida for non-breeding.

So we only have a wintering population here.

Their populations have been declining about 9% a year since 1998.

And that trend hasn't seen to subside at all due to forces such as sea level rise, marsh loss.

Listing them for the Endangered Species Act has been delayed to 2023.

So getting as much information about where they're at right now is really important for that potential listing.

- [Narrator] Their population decline is an indicator of their habitat being squeezed out of existence as marshes get pushed up against hardened surfaces by sea level rise.

And salt marshes aren't just a home for birds and sea life.

They do a lot of important things on the coast.

- So many things.

- So many reasons.

- Food, carbon things, storm protection, flooding protection, they do everything.

- They are a buffer before our coastline.

So it's like really important to have that good buffer of marsh to really protect your coastline and provide habitat for multiple species.

- [Narrator] This marsh buffer is made up of plants that are uniquely adapted to thrive in soggy, salty conditions.

- [Evan] Marsh can be defined by the amount of time in a year that the soil is wet or moist, and whether it's anoxic or lacking oxygen.

- And as you can see around us, we have a lot of spiky vegetation.

- [Evan] So right now we're surrounded by this spiky Juncus, but farther out, the deeper you get, the closer you get to the water, you're gonna see a different breakdown of plant species.

And that's because certain plant species are more tolerant to constant inundation and salt water.

- [Narrator] But even highly adaptable marsh plants have their limits.

High water levels can actually drown a marsh if the soil never dries out.

Researchers like Marae and Evan are collecting data to figure out how marshes will be impacted as sea levels continue to rise.

- It's a very small elevation gradient that leads to these different plant communities.

If this water comes up even a little more for a long period of time, this Juncus is gonna turn into Spartina.

The Juncus is gonna go away, 'cause that's a slightly higher elevation plant species.

- [Narrator] In the past, marshes adapted to sea level rise by moving inland to higher ground.

But today, there's nowhere for them to go.

- We're hardening our coastlines.

We're shortening our marshes.

We're seeing a lot of coastal squeeze.

So we have a development or a road or something that marsh has nowhere else it can go.

So it gets squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until that marsh just disappears.

- There's a lot of population growth along the coast.

So those trends are not looking to turn in the opposite direction.

We need to plan ahead for these things, both for, like, human infrastructure, but also for, like, ecosystem services, to be able to migrate inland.

And right now, we're not doing that.

- [Narrator] By gathering data about things like tides, elevation and sea level rise, researchers like Marae can use models to predict what will happen in the future.

- Sea level rise has gone up and down forever, but it's at an accelerated pace right now, which is why we think we're having more inundation than we would if it was just at a steady rise.

So modeling can help us see where on each site is gonna be most impacted by water inundation.

So, with that, we are able to hopefully target where we can do specific management strategies.

- [Narrator] Learning more about what's happening to species like the saltmarsh sparrow can help us make decisions now to ensure that there are marshes along our coast in the future.

- [Evan] If we see that certain huge portions of the marshland that they depend on during the winter are disappearing, then we have to decide where are those marshes gonna go.

Are they going to migrate in?

Should we start looking at acquiring property to make sure that this species has a place to move?

- Where do you put your resources?

Do you put it in buying land?

Do you put it at trying to conserve that marsh?

Or building it up some more, like, those are some of the questions we're trying to help managers answer.

If we can create this framework of understanding the impacts of sea level rise and where this marsh might disappear or where it might go, we can hopefully help these managers make decisions for that.

[pensive piano music] - [Narrator] Just outside of Winston-Salem, beekeeper and farmer, Samantha Winship believes that bees are one of the best bellwethers we have for observing real time changes in weather and climate.

[uptempo music] - My name is Samantha Winship Mark.

I am the owner and operator of Mother's Finest Family Farm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

I am a beekeeper, a farmer, I love being outside, I love being connected to nature and it's a huge part of my life.

It's like during the morning rounds every day, just kind of assessing what they need.

[indistinct chattering] Go there now, we'll get you some.

We homeschool here on the farm as well, so we do use our backyard as a classroom.

- And tomatoes.

- Mm-hm.

- [Boy] Thank you.

- And I really feel like it's a place of healing for me and my family.

So everybody's good?

- I think so.

- Oh, okay.

Anybody, a blind men can see, we're black farmers -[Boy] Love you Derek and I really like to showcase the pride of being outside in that land.

Good.

- Thank you.

- Okay, let's do it.

And people can really have a sense of, "Hey, if that woman can do it, I can do it too."

So we just gonna get 'em kind of calm down and we gonna get to work here.

Working with the bees is definitely my happy place.

I just like how they all work together.

So this is what we would call the hub check.

And I wish that more people could think like bees when they're maneuvering through life, see nectar.

Bees, tell us so much about weather and climate.

With a day like this, of course they're super active.

Like when the seasons are changing, but throughout the years that I've been farming, I'm starting to see that kind of change.

I mean, with it being like 88, it really tricks them into thinking that it's spring or summer again.

This year is either been too much rain or too little rain.

It tricks the relationship between plants and bees.

We're in November now, and last week it reached 88 degrees.

We didn't even get ones this big in summer.

I've seen some brand new tomato plants coming up with flowers on them.

- It's a lot greenhouse tomatoes.

- I see sunflowers trying to bloom crazy.

That feeling of being in tune with nature is leaving.

We're still getting peppers.

It's odd.

And it's kind of coming a place where we can't really predict what's next.

- Switching over into a whole nother season.

- It's a tomato right there.

- It's really weird.

- [Mark] So it's hard to tell what to really do with a beekeeping season.

- We had a late spring.

The bees didn't wanna even come out.

- We need those bees to pollinate the plants, but if it's not warm enough, they can't even come out.

And these type of things are factors in how we get our food.

- The habits of the bees have changed, the habits of our plants have changed.

- The future really depends on on bees.

And with no pollinators then we don't have food.

Being more educated on all of it and doing little things to help, our environment is so key.

So I really hope that people will get more engaged with the environment, teaching our children about things that matter and topics that matter.

What role do we have in trying to do protect the bees and also native bees and plants?

And I guess for me, my motivation is really trying to get back to that, empowering the people and getting people involved and on wanting to stand up for something that's so important.

I think the future definitely relies on more small farms and families.

I always say planting a seed is a revolutionary act and I truly 100% believe it's the little things that are gonna make the biggest changes in the future.

I guess you should still be thankful for the harvest.

- Very thankful.

- [Narrator] Back at the beach, coastal tourism is an important part of North Carolina's economy.

But as more development, erosion and rising seas slowly chip away at North Carolina's coastline, communities are having to decide whether to replenish the beach or risk losing tourists and residents alike.

- There's never two years that are the same about our beach.

It builds up, it drops down, it gets ledges.

It's just an unpredictable thing.

- [Narrator] One thing people who live on the coast know, is that the only constant is change.

[thunder rumbling] Waves and wind move sand around daily.

And when a storm comes through dramatic changes to the shape of the coast can happen overnight.

- The power of mother nature and what she can do to months and years of investment and movement, and the power of the sea combined with the power of a storm is shearly astonishing.

- [Narrator] And with a warming climate, bringing rising seas and more severe storms, the dynamic beach becomes even more vulnerable.

- Sea level is rising at a rate that we can deal with.

We could say that pretty definitively.

We're dealing with it by nursing beaches, on the marsh, we're adding plants, we could do sea walls, we could do all sorts of things that we have been doing and they've been near working to a certain degree.

- [Narrator] For a busy beach town like Emerald Isle, the toughest challenge is holding onto the beach that residents and tourists love.

One solution, feeding the beach.

[upbeat music] - It's basically taking sand from outside the beach system and putting it on the beach.

- During beach nourishment, giant pumps siphon sand from offshore and empty it onto the beach.

But it turns out not all sand is beach worthy.

- If you ask anybody what is sand you'll get a thousand different answers.

Sand is a very scientific term.

It's any grain that's between one 16th and two millimeters.

Now, if it's finer, then sand has a very scientific term, it's called mud.

And if it's above sand, it's called gravel.

You wanna match the native beach sand.

If you think about it, you take a bucket of mud and throw it out.

It's gonna ooze all over the place.

And vice versa.

If you take a bucket of rocks or gravel that's gonna be really steep.

- [Narrator] And after finding the right kind of sand successful beach nourishment requires proper sculpting.

- We don't just throw the sand on the beach.

You have to contour.

You don't want the next little storm to come and take away a bunch of fine grain, sand or mud that you put on the beach.

So that point right there, is right where the old vegetation meets the brand new vegetation.

It looks kind of angular, but like in a year, the doom plants will start collecting the sand and you'll have this nice, almost wavy type of feel like you do in the native area.

- [Narrator] Precise measurements before hurricane season allow town officials to know how much sand was lost in the storm and how much remains.

Beach nourishment begins when specific thresholds for sand loss are met.

- 'Cause we went almost 30 years without having a major storm, if you will.

And then all of a sudden the '90s came Birth and Fran, Bonnie in '98, then we had Dennis one and two, it hit us twice.

And then we had Floyd.

So at that time we started what we call monitoring program.

So we survey the beach from the top of the dune underwater.

- [Narrator] The federal government will reimburse a community for sand lost during a specific storm.

- You have to do it just for that event.

Hence why we survey us before the hurricane season, 'cause we got that perfect snapshot.

- [Narrator] But who pays for beach nourishment when it's needed any other time of the year?

- In Carroll County, when you stay at hotel condo, you pay a 6% Occi tax and half that goes to the sole purpose of ocean front beach nourishment.

Besides the Occi tax, each town has a portion of their Avon's property tax going towards nourishment as well.

- Why invest so much into something that could wash away with the next storm?

The beach fuels an economic engine with ripple effects across the state.

- Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the state of North Carolina and beaches are one of the biggest attractions.

- You think about it, we don't have a convention center, we don't have massive hotels, we don't have the Carolina Panthers or the hurricanes.

We have the beach.

- We love going on the beach with the grandchildren.

We love walking on the pier.

We love walking all around the neighborhood.

- The fishing and the restaurants is just a great place to be in the summertime.

- [Narrator] For now beach nourishment is staying ahead of the changes brought by warming climate.

The question is, how long will beach nourishment be able to keep up with the more dynamic coast and how long will we be able to afford it?

- [Man] We have to nourish every year, the same place.

Well then that's gonna be sustainable.

Nourish the same place every three to five to seven years, we can do that.

- [Narrator] 70 Miles Northeast of Emerald Isle is Ocracoke, a remote island at the southernmost point of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Just a short run to the Gulf stream.

The waters here are home to an abundance of fish species, but changing fish migration patterns and coastal erosion have raised questions around the future of the island and of the residents that live and work there.

- I really do enjoy fishing.

It's a beautiful fall day.

There's an element of unpredictability that I like.

A little breezy, but not too bad.

I wouldn't rather be doing anything else with my life right now.

My name's Morty Gaskill, I'm from Ocracoke, North Carolina.

I fish commercially for a living.

For a while, I was the youngest commercial fisherman on the island.

This is a photo of my dad delivering clams to the Cafe Atlantic.

I started when I was like three or four riding along with him and I got my first boat when I was like 11.

I went to North Carolina State University and graduated from there.

Just came back here and started fishing.

Yeah, I loved it, haven't stopped.

I think living out here on the edge of the world, we have a very unique perspective about the environmental surroundings.

Well, the water temperature is down today.

I mean last week the water was still 75 degrees in the sound, which is pretty hot for the third week of October.

When I was a kid, September was a fall month, unlike now September's like about the hottest month of the year, it feels like.

I mean, I think climate change is happening.

The extent is open to interpretation.

Anecdotal evidence is all I see, I would say, but I mean, serves different definitely.

Just in my lifetime highway 12, if you get through a year without a significant portion of it being knocked out, it's considered lucky right now.

It seems like we kind of get 100 year storm event now every two or three years.

And also the sand is not replacing on the westward side at the rate it's being eroded on the eastward side.

I wouldn't necessarily say that's all climate change, but I don't think it's helped by that matters either.

There's a vacant lot where a house got demolished.

Hurricane Dorian was an absolute disaster for Ocracoke.

Overwash and Dorian all came from the sound.

When the wind came around on the backside of the storm, I start to hear this gurgly noise.

I look had the yards full of water and I said, "Oh no, that's not good."

We got about six, eight inches of water in this house during Hurricane Dorian.

Fortunately we didn't get it up to the outlet "cause then the whole house would've had to be rewired.

A lot of people lost their houses.

A lot of people lost a lot of their belongings.

This whole parking lot was piled with like the debris.

Like you could see it from out in the water.

I mean it's concerning.

It is.

I've just headed towards our palm there.

I feel like climate change has added a layer of difficulty to fishing.

I used to you'd start catching flounders real good in like mid-September back when my dad was doing it.

There's a lot of species that have shifted north in recent years, but there's some very good fish species that are more prevalent here than they were.

We're catching more spence knuckles and more Southern species like pompanos and Jack Crevalle.

We see a few more of them here.

In that sense climate change has both positives and negatives and that's why if you stay stuck in one place, you're not gonna do very well.

You have to be able adapt.

I try to keep my options as open as possible out here.

So I can always have a way to figure out what I can do to make a living.

It's hard to say what the future can hold.

I don't know what to expect moving forward.

I mean we know ever had like a category five, make it all the way up here.

And I don't know if that's gonna be something that's gonna be in the cars.

My immediate concerns generally keep that in the back of my head though.

I mean on the balance, not really anywhere else, I'd rather live.

I'm proud of what I do, definitely.

I'm proud of being able to survive out here with its set of challenges and uncertainties.

It's about what you like to do.

And that's what I like to do.

[man laughing] - [Narrator] Across the Pamlico Sound and up the Tar River from Ocracoke, lies the historic majority black town of Princeville, an inland town that like Ocracoke, has a long history of flooding, and a resilient local community determined to weather the storm.

♪ Oh freedom, freedom hill, ♪ ♪ we built the round by round ♪ ♪ from the waters Princeville came, ♪ ♪ birth from by hollow ground.

♪ - Princeville has flooded many times.

And we've been asked as a group collectively, "Well, why don't you all just leave?"

Especially after the flood, Matthew, people was saying, okay, enough already.

When you love something or someone, you just don't give up on it that quick.

- [Narrator] The historic town of Princeville, sits on Lowline land within the 100 year flood plane of the Tar River.

In 1885, it was the first town incorporated by African African Americans in the United States.

Even with the levy between the town and the river, big storms like Hurricane Floyd in 1999, And Hurricane Matthew in 2016, have brought devastating floods to the town.

Hurricane Matthew flooded 80% of Princeville, filling most of the buildings with over eight feet of water, including the elementary school.

- When I first arrived here in Edgecomb, it was maybe two years after the flood.

And when I walked in the building was pretty much a shell.

Furniture destroyed, it looked like an abandoned building, a lot of broken windows, because it had been left vacant for a few years.

- We had lost our school.

So therefore we lost everything.

Even personal belongings of the children and the teachers.

It played a very big impact on our students because they were displaced.

- We had to stay at another school for a long time.

- I was wondering what was gonna happen.

I was kind of scared 'cause I, "Are we gonna go back to school?"

- [Narrator] Despite the devastation of these floods and the potential for future flooding, residents of Princeville are working to rebuild.

- Princeville is not going anywhere.

This is family.

This is home.

Our ancestors' blood, sweat, and tears paved the way for us.

So the least that we can do and where we are today is continue to build upon that momentum.

- [Narrator] But with climate change increasing the likelihood of storms with even more rainfall in the future, they're rebuilding with flood resiliency in mind.

NC state and the principal community, developed a flood print plan, converting vacant land into community garden plots and building green infrastructure, like rain gardens around Princeville Elementary.

- It's making the school site more storm friendly if you will, because it's dealing with the water that's coming off, parking lots, roofs and other impervious surfaces.

And then at the same time, it provides multitude of benefits through working with teachers on how it's incorporated into the curriculum.

And so think of the landscape as the largest classroom at Princeville Elementary School.

- [Narrator] The landscape around the school, isn't the only thing being redesigned for the future.

- The whole building is still original, but the inside wasn't good at 100%.

Some of the things we did such as raising all the light switches and receptacles above four feet high, Removed all the sheet rock.

So all of our walls now are masonry walls, so that if we were to have water again, it should us a matter of coming in, wiping them down.

The interior doors are now at what you call FRP doors.

You just wipe the doors off.

We actually put in flood vents that if the water ever came in, instead of it being trapped in here, the doors will open up automatically and they'll allow the water to escape.

And we put the air conditioning air handlers on top of the mezzanine and we moved all the electrical panels above the a ceiling as well.

So now that if we were to experience water, we would not lose the major systems.

- [Narrator] The mezzanine also serves as an elevated storage space for critical parts of the school.

If they hear that a flood is coming.

- [Jerome] People don't think about simple as buying library books.

Like it takes a while to get those books ordered and restored back into the building.

- [Teacher] I pray that we don't have another flood, but it won't take us a long time to get back in our building.

- [Narrator] Beyond all the financial implications of a flood, being displaced from the school they're familiar with, can have a big impact on kids.

- I got scared 'cause there's some other new kids there and all of them, my friends moved away.

- A lot of times, school is a place that kids feel safe.

You already know, okay, I'm coming to school.

I know I'm gonna have breakfast and I'm gonna have lunch and you have a place that you can just be a kid and learn.

And so when you first walked through that door after three years, it was just like, I'm getting emotional, just thinking about it.

Like it was just like we're back home.

- Each time Princeville flood, it may take some time for it to become back to a livable condition.

But each time we bounced back, even before my time, somebody bounced back.

So I said, well, if they bounced back, if Turner Prince and the crew bounced back, I can stay here and help it to bounce back.

♪ Standing tall through wind and rain, ♪ ♪ from the waters rose again.

♪ ♪ oh, Princeville yet to remain, ♪ ♪ God's faithfulness abound.

♪ - [Narrator] Hurricane Matthew's destruction in Princeville and across North Carolina was catastrophic.

But not all flooding is due to big storms.

In recent years, more North Carolina communities are experiencing flooding from rain events alone.

Or in the case of some coastal areas, even extreme high tides.

- So there are days when like today it's pretty sunny.

There's no rain, but you see a big puddle right around your storm drain.

What's happening is ocean, sea water is actually coming in through the pipes and up and out onto the street.

- [Narrator] A puddle of water in the street may not seem like a big deal, but this isn't rainwater.

It's salty ocean water.

And it's incredibly corrosive to cars, pipes, and infrastructure in general, it's known as sunny day flooding.

And it's a problem all along the East Coast where the frequency of these floods has doubled since 2000.

- Climate change has caused sea levels to rise.

And with that, our storm water infrastructure, which was built decades ago is not behaving as intended.

With rising seas, water can go up through storm drains and overflow onto streets.

- The challenge is really the frequency.

So even just in the past couple of decades, we've seen places that used to only flood a few times a year, now they're seeing flooding 20, 30, 40 days a year.

You hit these tipping points where all of a sudden, every high tide or a high tide every three weeks is above that threshold that you're worried about.

And so when it happens that frequently, we start to worry because it's disrupting people's commutes to work.

It's forcing school buses to operate on a different schedule.

It's preventing customers from getting to businesses if the entire parking lot is flooded.

And so it goes from being something that was maybe a concern once a year, to something that's a really disruptive weekly occurrence.

- [Narrator] Miyuki, Katherine and their team, are trying to discover the extent of the problem in Beaufort.

So other communities can better understand how to manage these floods.

- And what we have come up with here for the town at Beaufort and some other in Carolina, is to create a really cheap sensor, that we can put in storm drains and get the data in real time.

But it's hard to sometimes tell how far that water has traveled on the road.

So we have a camera, so you don't have to drive through a salty lake.

You can check our website and see if water's actually coming up through the drain.

- Having that information will be very powerful.

And I don't think we're the only community that's dealing with it all throughout the coast.

So we can also partner with those communities.

What have you done?

What have been successful?

What have you struggled with?

So we don't always have to reinvent the wheel.

- These are really, really important places.

I get lots of questions about long term futures of coastal communities.

The answers to this type of flooding are gonna be different from place to place.

So in some places they might choose to invest in their storm water infrastructure, that might also involve elevating some of the buildings that are most exposed.

And in others, they might just say, this stretch where we're really concerned about how often it's flooding, maybe the best use of that land is a park where it can flood, the water can recede, and it's not going to put anyone in danger or put any buildings into any type of physical damage.

- We know that our boardwalk, the sub-structure is starting to crumble a little bit.

So we've gotta be able to fix this.

Can we work with UNC and the experts there, and then determine when we repair the bulkhead, how do we do this in a way that'll help protect our community?

- [Mayor] The most important thing is that we're trying to preserve what the community values in the long term.

And that means that people from outside of the community, aren't going to know what's best.

- We can do our part at a local level, but this is a national problem.

This is a global problem as well, and we need the US to have be a national leader in reversing the effects of climate change.

- [Mayor] Our ecosystem is becoming off balance.

That is really beginning to talk back to us in a very different way.

So we're gonna have to listen to it.

- [Narrator] Flooding in urban areas causes all kinds of problems.

But what happens to our pristine wilderness areas as more extreme weather events, continue to raise waters and turn up the heat?

- It's the perfect day, the perfect weather and the perfect place to go.

I am Charles Robbins, owner operator of Cape Fear River Adventures in Wilmington, North Carolina.

I do canoe kayak tours through the Three Sisters Swamp area on the Black river.

Is a good place to fish in June.

To show people the ancient types trees that we have there.

It affects people differently.

Some are here for the science, some are here for the trees and then the birders will come in here.

I was raised in the country on a small tobacco farm and my granddad and I loved to be in the woods, the colors, the smells you stay forever in here.

So I'd rather be outdoors than indoors.

The Three Sisters area of The Black River.

When I was shown those trees, I was drawn to it like a way I don't understand I'd come in and just walk in big circles.

These trees are 2,600 years old.

That's probably a couple of thousand in there.

This is a great example of an ancient Cypress tree here.

And I wanted to know where they were and I wanted how to navigate the swamp.

We may have corded this tree and it would show its weather pattern in those tree rings.

So you want to find a tree that's solid.

You try to find the heart and you turn this.

The basic reading of a tree ring, the width between one tree ring to the next tree ring, correlates exactly to moisture content of that season.

A tight ring will mean a dry year.

A a wide ring will mean a wet year.

Because they are almost 3000 years old, they have given us the story of weather east of the Rockies.

There's just nothing else left except these Cypress trees in the United States, for our weather, The weather in general climate effect on the Three Sisters in the last 10 to 12 years, particularly, We're having drier drought.

It's been really low in here all summer, and we're having wetter wet, bigger hurricanes, more rainfall flooding.

These floods that we've had has brought so much more sand in here.

Things won't deteriorate so much if they're underwater all the time, but when they're fluctuating with drought, dry, wet, dry, it's just a perfect time for rot.

And I've seen trees now lower in the swamp that five years ago were quite healthy and now they're falling apart.

But the thing that would really do the most damage is salt.

There's a change in habitat when you have salt water intrusion.

We're only seven to eight feet above sea level, and it's definitely possible.

Now we are hoping we don't have salt water intrusion up here because it will kill these trees How much longer they can stand, is everybody's guess.

You see where they've been and you see that they're still here.

They have seen drought and they have seen wet.

They'll outlive me and hope many more generations, but there's some coming down.

We're gonna lose some of these trees.

I don't take any of this for granted.

That's why every time I'm in here, I enjoy it like I did the last time and the first time.

We all have a part to play in saving places like this.

National forests, national parks, we all need a place to go.

We need a place to go relax and feel peaceful, and in there you feel young and small.

[man laughing] - [Narrator] A few hundred miles to the west of the Three Sister Swamp, and high a top, one of the state's most iconic peaks, is another North Carolina treasure feeling the heat of a change in climate.

- The highest elevations in our Southern Appalachian Mountains are very unique.

They support some species of plants and animals that occur nowhere else on earth, only in North Carolina at the high elevations.

And there's a very long winter, a very short growing season.

And there is a huge amount of rainfall and precipitation in these areas.

- Most of the environments here have thin soils, they're very acidic.

Here at Grandfather Mountain, we're known for our winds.

We're one of the windiest places in the state.

- [Narrator] The extreme environments of North Carolina's high elevation peaks, play host to an ancient and rare ecosystem.

The Spruce Fur forest.

- This ecosystem is so important for providing habitat for several species of plants and animals that really are unique to this area.

Red Spruce, Frazier fir, gaelics, a variety of mosses and lichens, Hellers blazing star and Roan Mountain bluet, these species are adapted to survive in these harsh conditions.

They grow very slowly.

They don't disperse very far.

So they're really limited to these mountain peaks, which we can think of as almost like islands in the sky.

And so in order to survive over time, really, they just hunker down, their strategy is to persist.

- So this is a small Fraser fir, and this is a good example of a small sapling that could be 40 to 50 years old, just waiting for its opportunity to get sunlight and grow to the canopy.

- When we're walking through old Grove forests, we often think about the trees as being old, but many people don't think about the herbs.

This patch of gaelics took decades to establish.

It's another reason we need to protect these natural areas and to think about how we can connect them to a resilient landscape.

- [Narrator] Because of the 2000 foot elevation change from its base to the peak, hiking from the bottom to the top of Grandfather Mountain, can be compared ecologically with hiking from Georgia to Canada, which allows the area to support a huge diversity of species.

- So Grandfather Mountain is an international biosphere reserve.

There's over 400 biosphere globally, and they identified the most unique places on the planet.

And here at Grandfather, we have more than 70 listed rare and endangered plants and animals that call this place home.

Many of those are endemic, meaning they're only found in two or three places on the planet.

- [Narrator] But because they're so specially adapted, these species are threatened by shifts in temperature and precipitation caused by a changing climate.

- We don't know how the species are going to be able to adapt over time.

Historically the earth has warmed and cooled periodically, but the changes that we're seeing today may be happening faster than they happen in the past.

- One of the things it's been interesting the last few years have been really heavy rainfalls in the spring, especially in May.

We've had two really epic 300 year flood events that have happened in back to back years in may.

And of course that's followed by droughts.

- [Narrator] Warmer temperatures also mean that fast growing species from further down the mountain could creep upwards and outcompete the slower growing species at the top, like the red spruce and Frazier firs.

- We believe about three degrees would cause a thousand foot retreat of spruce for forest.

So three degree annual temperature could potentially take Frazier fir off the top of Grandfather Mountain with time.

- And so it's so important to protect them now, because if we lose them, we're not gonna get 'em back.

- [Narrator] Land conservation efforts are a critical tool for reducing human impact and keeping these unique places around for the future.

Organizations like The Natural heritage program, and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund work together with local governments and land trusts, to establish a resilient network of nature preserves across the state.

- So when we conserve a piece of land, we preserve and protect that land forever.

Grandfather Mountain is remarkable ecologically in its own right.

And fortunately it's permanently protected.

The entire mountain.

But it actually extends well down the valley.

For example, Wilson Creek has its source on the highest point of Grandfather Mountain and falls 4,000 feet into what is some of the best trout water in the Southeastern United States.

This landscape scale conservation like Grandfather Mountain and the areas below it in the valley are so important because it gives plants and animals, a migration corridor during this time of intense stress with climate change, to migrate.

- [Narrator] And beyond protecting our prized natural spaces, conservation can actually play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

- We've long recognized the value of conservation for protecting these unique ecosystem systems.

What we've learned more recently, is that land conservation also helps reduce the effects of climate change, by pulling carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere and storing carbon in our trees and our soils and below ground.

We need to make sure that we're able to get these places into conservation, so that they can persist for our future generations.

- When you think about climate change, and you think about the things that are happening in our world, there's some optimism there that we at least have protected the place so that plants and animals have an ability to move and adapt as things change around us in our world.

- [Narrator] From the majestic Cypress of the Three Sister Swamp, to a small town, that's overcome so much.

All across the state, examples of how a changing climate is impacting the environment and the north Carolinians who live, work and play here.

Weather climate change alone or a combination of factors at play, we can't deny real stories of impact felt across the State.

As our communities look to mitigate the crisis and plan for the future, we're seeing more promise in working with nature, rather than against it.

Perhaps by looking at home first, by better understanding the changes that are taking place in our own backyards, and what small steps we can each make here and now, we can begin a local shift towards a global change.

[calm music] ♪ [rushing water] [birds chirping]