Coastal Responses to Sea Level Rise: Landscape-Scale Understanding in an Uncertain Future
Overview
Rising sea levels and more frequent high-intensity storms are rapidly changing the coastal landscape of the Northeastern US and threatening the services they provide (for example, storm protection, flood mitigation, habitat, carbon sinks, and recreation). However, coastal landscapes are complex – they include wetlands, rocky headlands, mainland and barrier beaches, dunes, and uplands -- and each environment will likely respond differently to change. This complexity makes it difficult, but critical, for resource managers, decision-makers, and the public to know ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘how likely,’ and ‘how extreme’ coastal landscape change is expected to be across the region.
This project aims to create awareness, support engagement, and build a community of practice to explore the complexities, uncertainties, and management challenges of coastal landscape change. The project team will use landscape models to study coastal change at a variety of time scales (0 to 50+ years), scenarios (low to high sea-level rise rates), and coastal systems (e.g., tidal wetlands or beaches). Importantly, these models will be co-developed with input from coastal land managers, tribes, and other restoration practitioners to ensure the models meet their needs, uses, and priorities. This collaborative approach will make projections of coastal and wetland landscape responses to sea-level rise and climate change relevant and useable across the region.
The project team will produce public data releases of the model output and create an online geo-narrative describing the project and its outcomes. Focusing on coastal wetlands, the landscape-scale models from this project will improve collective understanding of future coastal change and provide tools and training needed to put the most up-to-date, useable science into the hands of decision makers and the public.