Year: 2018
Project(s):
Relevance
It is gradually becoming more commonplace to integrate sea‐level rise (SLR) into decision-making along the coast, from natural resource management to community planning to individual residents’ choices. However, stakeholders across the coastal system struggle to understand and apply sea‐level rise scenarios to their maximum utility. This is often driven by the existence of multiple suites of SLR scenarios, time‐steps and probabilities.
Response
The Sentinel Site Program, led by the Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative (a Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant-supported program), developed a suite of files to easily generate an SLR fact sheet. The SLR two‐pager communicates regionally specific (1 degree latitude x 1 degree longitude) SLR scenarios, days of future flooding and guidance on how to use the scenarios when planning. Expected end‐users are extension and outreach specialists, community planners, natural resource managers and other coastal decisionmakers.
Results
Extension and outreach professionals throughout the United States used the two-pager, improving communication around SLR and increasing consideration of SLR in coastal planning, community development and individual decision‐making. For example, in Pensacola, Florida, the members that attended a coastal resilience evaluation identified a critical evacuation route as at risk to future storm surge based, in part, on the two-pager.
Recap
The Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative improved communication of sea‐level rise science through improved access and a customizable fact sheet. (2018)