- October 03, 2025
- By Cazzy Medley
Sea level is rising and land is subsiding along Maryland’s coasts, and the resulting saltwater intrusion upon freshwater soils poses a growing threat to Maryland farmland. Now, a new dashboard developed by University of Maryland researchers provides the clearest picture yet of the scale and spread of this threat.
The interactive tool known as the Climate-Smart Agriculture Dashboard reveals that over 14,000 acres of cropland are already highly vulnerable, with staple crops like corn and soybeans at greatest risk. In some Eastern Shore counties, all farmland is rated at moderate to high vulnerability.
“Highly vulnerable” means that the farmland is located above an aquifer that is likely to become salty in the future, especially if the sea level continues to rise or if groundwater is pumped out at a higher rate, said Kara Mobley, senior faculty specialist in the Department of Geographical Sciences. “In practice, this means the soil and groundwater in those areas are at greater risk of becoming unsuitable for farming and irrigation in the coming years,” she said.
Mobley is a key investigator for the Climate Resilience Network, a UMD Grand Challenges Grants-funded project that unifies the expertise of UMD’s scientists to help Maryland’s decision makers address the complexities of changing long-term weather and climate patterns. Her team developed the dashboard to bring together essential data and maps to highlight specific vulnerabilities that can impact agricultural resilience, such as sea level rise, coastal flooding, precipitation and temperature extremes, erosion and groundwater availability. Next, the team hopes to integrate data analyzing solar panel installations on crop fields across Maryland.
This tool is publicly available on the Climate Resilience Network website. Users can also view detailed source information for each dataset and download them directly from the dashboard in feature or tile layer formats for further analysis.