Word: barriere
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...create new runoff patterns for rainfall and irrigation; combined with seepage from septic systems, the drainage weakens the land itself. On the East and Gulf coasts, the major problem is destruction of beaches and sand dunes that normally check the ocean's force. Of particular concern are the 295 barrier islands -- strips of sand dune, marsh and sometimes forest -- that protect most of the U.S. coast from Maine to Texas. Not surprisingly, they are considered prime development spots: Atlantic City, N.J., Virginia Beach, Va., and Hilton Head, S.C., among others, were all built on barrier islands...
...mainly the dunes, explains the National Park Service's Soller, that keep coastal areas, including barrier islands, intact. "The natural process is for dunes to roll over on themselves," he says. When the ocean breaks through, "what was once the secondary dune becomes the primary dune. The beach retreats as the ocean level rises. When you have houses on the beach, there's no place for the dunes to move...
...Gulf Coast, the erosion of dry land is only part of the problem. Vast areas of wetlands normally protected by barrier islands off Louisiana are disappearing as well. In both Louisiana and Texas, where channels deep enough for barges have been cut through marshes, the dredging and waves caused by ship and boat traffic have accelerated the normal process of shoreline loss. What is more, salt water from the Gulf of Mexico has flowed into the marshes, endangering local fisheries...
...shore to prevent the waters from washing away roads. Conservation officers are planting dense patches of cordgrass just offshore in an effort to buffer the bay's clay banks from the relentlessly lapping waters. To protect the transplants until they take hold, conservationists have jury-rigged a protective barrier of old Air Force parachutes in the water to absorb and attenuate the force of the waves. Harry Cook, a Texas shrimper, is considering wire mesh and old tires to keep the bay waters from chewing away any more of his bluffs, which he is losing at the rate...
...Journal of the American Medical Association by a team led by Gynecologist Daniel Cramer of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. After studying past contraceptive use by 283 childless women with tubal infertility and 3,833 new mothers, the researchers found that women who had used barrier contraceptives had 40% less risk of tubal infertility. The explanation, suggests one of the report's authors, Harvard Epidemiologist Marlene Goldman, is that these contraceptives prevent any germs carried in the semen from reaching the upper genital tract and causing pelvic inflammatory disease, the most common cause of tubal infertility. Concluded Willard...