Until recently, there has only been talk about the need to integrate hazard mitigation planning with climate change adaptation. Talk has turned to action in Delaware, where the first-ever community action plan that successfully combines the two planning processes was adopted by the City of Lewes on August 15.
The cover story of this edition of Coastal Services looks at how Delaware Sea Grant and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability USA helped the City of Lewes create its Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Action Plan.
One of the lessons that came out of the project was how effective it is to use natural hazards to start a conversation about climate change with a community.
Understanding the history of hurricane landfalls is an important step toward assessing a coastal community’s vulnerability. A helpful tool is the recently updated NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks mapping application, which can easily generate customized maps based on more than 150 years of global hurricane data.
Historical Hurricane Tracks allows users to search by place name, storm name or year, or latitude and longitude points. The search results generate a map showing the track of the storm or storms accompanied by a table of related information.
The tool, which can be viewed at www.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/, was developed by the NOAA Coastal Services Center in partnership with the National Hurricane Center and the National Climatic Data Center.
Other articles in this edition of Coastal Services look at how coastal resource managers in American Samoa are taking advantage of a new NOAA Climate-Smart Sanctuary planning process, and a technical primer on “rolling easements” that was recently published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Ready Estuaries program to get managers thinking about options for addressing sea level rise.
You can also read about how managers in Indiana are using a smartphone application to provide coastal information to younger audiences.
As always, we hope you find the articles in this edition of Coastal Services interesting and informative.
-- Margaret A. Davidson
