The Designing Coastal Conservation to Deliver Ecosystem & Human Well-being Benefits research study developed a spatially-explicit conservation plan that identifies the most efficient locations for conservation actions to meet ecological goals while sustaining or enhancing human well-being values within the coastal and nearshore areas of the western Lake Erie basin (WLEB).
Coastal County Snapshots turn complex data into easy-to-understand stories, complete with charts and graphs. Users select a coastal county of interest and the website does the rest, providing information that can help communities become more resilient to coastal hazards. Current snapshot topics include flood exposure, wetland benefits, and ocean and Great Lakes jobs. Local officials can use the snapshots as a planning tool to assess their county's resilience to flooding and understand the benefits provided by natural resources.
The Regional Coastal Resilience Grants program supports regional approaches to activities that build resilience of coastal regions, communities, and economic sectors to the negative impacts from extreme weather events, climate hazards, and changing ocean conditions.
Investing in habitat restoration and ecosystem resiliency projects provides sustainable and lasting benefits that reduce risks posed to coastal communities from extreme weather events, changing environmental conditions, and known or potential climate change impacts. The Coastal Ecosystem Resiliency Grants Program is intended to build the resilience of coastal ecosystems and communities in the U.S. This grant program funds projects that develop healthy and sustainable coastal ecosystems through on-the-ground habitat restoration and conservation.
The Climate and Societal Interactions (CSI): Coastal and Ocean Climate Applications (COCA) program, run by NOAA's Climate Program Office, addresses the needs of decision-makers dealing with pressing climate-related issues in coastal and marine environments. The program is designed to fund interdisciplinary teams of researchers in the development and transition of climate-related research and information to advance decision-making in coastal communities and coastal and marine ecosystems.
Beginning January 2010, Wisconsin's local and regional governments must base decisions that affect zoning, official mapping, and subdivision regulations on an adopted comprehensive plan [s.66.1001 Wisconsin Statutes]. As a result, an increasing number of communities are adopting new plans or updating existing plans to be consistent with the new laws. The Great Lakes Coastal Community Planning site is meant to be used a tool to support planning efforts along the Lake Michigan and Lake Superior coasts of Wisconsin.
The Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Planning Guide shows how coastal communities are using science based information to address coastal hazards such as flooding, shore erosion, and lake-level fluctuations. This new online resource connects people with the tools and data needed to consider natural hazards and climate change in local planning efforts.
PalEON (the PaleoEcological Observatory Network) is an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, ecological statisticians, and ecosystem modelers. This network works to reconstruct forest composition, fire regime, and climate in forests across the northeastern US and Alaska over the past 2000 years and then use this to drive and validate terrestrial ecosystem models. These vegetation maps display high-resolution settlement-era forest composition, based on witness tree and General Land Office data, for the Northeastern United States and Alaska.
The Community Forest Program is a grant program that authorizes the Forest Service to provide financial assistance to local governments, Tribal governments, and qualified nonprofits to acquire and establish community forests that provide continuing and accessible community benefits. In 2016, this program also prioritized projects that were located adjacent to coastal wetlands or hydrologically connected with the Great Lakes.