Tsunamis can strike any coastline in the world and can affect locations thousands of miles away from where they formed. They may be uncommon, but the devastation they cause makes them a deadly force in nature.
While tsunamis are not as frequent on the U.S. East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean as they are in the Pacific, they do pose a threat, and coastal communities need to be prepared.
In this edition of Coastal Services, the cover article looks at the lessons Hawaii coastal resource managers learned from the tsunami that was generated by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that devastated Japan in March. During that event, Hawaii experienced more than $30.6 million in damages to homes and resorts, the loss of significant wildlife, and impacts to protected beaches.
While Hawaii’s coastal managers were well prepared for a tsunami event and no human lives were lost, lessons were learned that may benefit other managers in areas at risk from tsunamis, storm surge, or coastal flooding.
Our writers also look at the Coastal Community Resilience Index, an easy-to-use tool developed for Gulf Coast communities to assess how prepared they are for storms and storm recovery.
To help communities with their assessment, the NOAA Coastal Services Center has worked with the NOAA Coastal Storms Program and the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA) to develop an interactive online mapping tool that provides an initial assessment of a community’s critical facilities and roads within the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zone. With information available for the entire Gulf of Mexico, the Critical Facilities Tool can be accessed at www.csc.noaa.gov/criticalfacilities/.
Other articles in this edition include how Massachusetts coastal resource managers are encouraging residents to create edible landscaping to help reduce nitrogen and carbon in the atmosphere—both contributors to climate change—and a new online resource for Alaskans that provides tools, videos, and publications that can raise climate change awareness and support local adaptation efforts.
As always, we hope you find these articles interesting and informative.
-- Margaret A. Davidson
