Coastal Resilience: Using interactive decision support to address the needs of natural and human communities in Long Island Sound, USA
Abstract
Coastal Resilience (www.coastalresilience.org) is an ecosystem-based, coastal and marine spatial planning framework and web mapping application that illustrates ecological, socioeconomic, and coastal hazards information in Long Island Sound (New York and Connecticut), USA. Much of Long Island Sound’s private property is only inches above sea level, placing millions of dollars in public and private funds at risk to rising sea levels and other coastal hazards. These impacts also threaten wetlands and other coastal ecosystems that provide habitat, natural buffers to storms, and other ecosystem services. Despite a growing awareness of global climate change, local decision makers still lack the tools to examine different management objectives as sea levels rise and coastal hazards increase. The Coastal Resilience project provides tools and information to better inform decision-making with a primary goal of identifying vulnerable human and natural communities, while illustrating the important role that ecosystems will play in the face of sea level rise and increased storm intensity. This study focuses on The Nature Conservancy’s use of innovative spatial analysis techniques and community engagement to identify and plan for the protection of vulnerable coastal communities and ecosystems, natural resource migration, and economic risk. This work is intended to help identify ecosystem based adaptation solutions in the face of global climate change. The Nature Conservancy, working with multiple partners such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NOAA’s Coastal Services Center, deliver this information via the internet to help local decision makers keep the environment and public safety in mind.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFMOS13A1215G
- Keywords:
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- 1641 GLOBAL CHANGE / Sea level change;
- 1928 INFORMATICS / GIS science;
- 1980 INFORMATICS / Spatial analysis and representation