How the National Estuary Programs Address — Climate Change

Estuaries face unique impacts from climate change. As sea-levels rise, increased erosion and inundation threaten many coastal wetlands and estuarine habitats. As temperatures rise due to climate change, so do stresses to habitats and fish and wildlife populations. Climate change will lead to more severe storms, which means increased polluted runoff. This runoff can further degrade water quality in estuarine waters.

NEP Approach/Success Stories

On this page:

Assessment and Planning
Restoration
Water infrastructure / Green infrastructure / Stormwater / Nonpoint sources
Monitoring and Research
Financing
Adaptation Plans
Vulnerability Assessments

Assessment and Planning

San Juan Bay Estuary Program (SJBEP): The SJBEP is working with local partners to use the CCMP as a model to develop watershed-based hazard mitigation plans for the eight municipalities within the NEP’s study area. These plans will conform with the territory’s Hazard Mitigation Plan and will enable municipalities to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ensure projects are eligible for FEMA funding.

Albemarle-Pamlico NEP (APNEP): The APNEP is partnering with the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs to work with tribal communities in the region to develop a strategy for incorporating resilience into tribal planning and community engagement processes. The project will also involve an analysis of tribal engagement in climate and resilience planning efforts around the U.S. as well as assistance from the Virginia Coastal Policy Center coordinating with state agencies and tribal communities in Virginia.

Restoration

Buzzards Bay NEP (BBNEP): The BBNEP is collaborating with scientists and managers in two studies to evaluate climate impacts on salt marshes, and potential adaptation and management strategies. In the second salt marsh climate resiliency project, funded by SNEP, the Buzzards Bay NEP is supporting scientists from the Woodwell Climate Research Center (formerly the Woods Hole Research Center), USGS, and Buzzards Bay Coalition, as well as natural resource managers and conservation organizations. In this study, there search team will investigate a potential mitigation technique called runnelling for slowing salt marsh loss.

Coastal and Heartland NEP (CHNEP): The CHNEP worked with communities to help them draft and implement Climate Adaptation Plans, such as the first one in SW Florida done for the City of Punta Gorda in 2009 and recently updated. The CHNEP worked with the City and other non‐governmental partners and volunteers to help implement some of the measures to date ‐ including multiple created oyster beds along the City’s shoreline into Charlotte Harbor to buffer storm surge.

Peconic Estuary Partnership (PEP): The PEP is using available climate change resiliency and habitat quality assessment tools like the Climate-Based Critical Lands Protection Strategy Criteria and Ranking Tool to help decision makers not only decide which lands to acquire, but also evaluate which adaptation strategy is appropriate. This tool was the basis to prioritize wetland restoration projects in Peconic’s Habitat Restoration Plan. In 2019, PEP worked with local partners to complete the estuary’s first living shoreline project on Peconic Land Trust’s Widow’s Hole Preserve. It will be monitored to assess efficacy in providing storm resilience and coastal habitat, and the changes in shoreline elevation over time.

Santa Monica Bay National Estuary Program (SMBNEP): The SMBNEP is engaged in various climate change initiatives affecting Santa Monica Bay and Los Angeles.

Through a U.S. EPA Climate Ready Estuary (CRE) grant, SMBNEP and researchers from Loyola Marymount University developed the Study of Potential Climate Change Impacts on Coastal Wetlands. The study analyzed future conditions of coastal wetlands in Los Angeles. To do so, the team used climatic and hydrological models to simulate the impacts of various sea level and precipitation scenarios.

The results of these models are being applied to the alternatives in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR)/ Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the 600-acre Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve.

The reserve is important regionally as a stop-over for the Pacific Flyway, and restoring it will help offset the 97-percent loss of coastal wetlands in Los Angeles. The ecological restoration is being conducted with an expected 3-foot rise in sea level by the end of the century. The contours and other features of the project will allow for the transgression of habitats as the complex experiences greater inundation while providing flood protection for the neighboring communities of Venice and Marina Del Rey.

The SMBNEP helped to convene a partnership of eleven local coastal jurisdictions and organizations to launch the regional AdaptLA Project. Funded by a grant from the State Coastal Conservancy and Coastal Commission, this multi-year project will gather data and model future coastlines. The application of this work is to determine coastal vulnerability to:

sea level rise;
increased wave heights;
more intense precipitation;
storm surges; and
El Niño Southern Oscillation.

The outputs of this work are intended to inform coastal municipalities and related agencies via a series of webinars, workshops and outreach to their constituents.

With an upcoming EPA grant, the SMBNEP will install high-precision, high-frequency pH and pCO2 sensors with project partners. The sensors will provide continuous measurements of ocean acidification (OA), helping SMBNEP understand the intensity and trend of OA in Santa Monica Bay compared to other locations along the West Coast.

With this information, project partners can explore how OA is affecting the amount, health and distribution of marine life. Lastly, these findings will help the team assess the need for the reduction of nutrients into Santa Monica Bay, from sources such as sewage treatment plants, urban runoff and aerial deposition.

Water infrastructure / Green infrastructure / Stormwater / Nonpoint sources

Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP): The TBEP is implementing a wastewater treatment plant, sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), and sea level rise risk assessment to quantify the environmental conditions causing SSOs. Mapping historical precipitation records with records of SSO date and volume, the TBEP will develop a statistical model to assess future risk of large SSOs. The model will be applied to accepted projected sea level values using a Monte Carlo methodology, yielding the future probability of overflow events in coming years. Information like this is essential to plan for and manage climate risk.

Puget Sound Program (PSP): The PSP worked with The Nature Conservancy to support the acceleration of integrated floodplain management in the basin, supporting both flood resilience and improved habitat corridors and water quality for salmon and other resources. The state now funds the Floodplains by Design program at $20 million per biennium.

Monitoring and Research

Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP): The TBEP has partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey for development and deployment of two ocean carbon systems for monitoring coastal acidification parameters within the Tampa Bay estuary and approximately 60 miles offshore to examine diurnal and seasonal fluctuations in coastal acidification parameters within and near the Bay, and to compare Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay Estuary trends for assessment of the potential mitigation role of seagrass in Tampa Bay. These ocean carbon systems will support ongoing local experiments within the bay on the effects of seagrass beds on seawater carbon chemistry as well as blue carbon research activities. This project addresses specific CCMP actions.

Barnegat Bay Partnership (BBP): The BBP recently began to deploy in situ, autonomous pCO2 and pH sensors to determine if coastal acidification is negatively impacting the shellfish restoration and aquaculture efforts that are happening in the area. Hardclams (Mercenarimercenaria) are the subject of both wild harvest and aquaculture, while eastern oysters are an expanding aquaculture product in the estuary. Both clams and oysters are the focus of restoration efforts due to reduced wild populations compared to historic levels.

Long Island Sound: The Long Island Sound Study sponsored the development of a strategic plan and program to detect signs of climate change in Long Island Sound estuarine and coastal ecosystems. The program, Sentinel Monitoring for Climate Change in Long Island Sound, is a multidisciplinary, scientific approach to provide early warnings of climate change impacts and develop processes to facilitate appropriate and timely management decisions and adaptation responses.

The program will base the early warnings on assessments of indicators and sentinels related to climate changes. Moreover, the program’s approach is novel in that it combines regional-scale predictions and climate drivers with local monitoring information to identify candidate sentinels of change.

Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP):The Critical Coastal Habitat Assessment is a project to detect changes to critical coastal habitats from climate change and indirect anthropogenic impacts through a long-term monitoring program.

The monitoring will characterize the baseline (2014/2015) status of the mosaic of critical coastal habitats and can be used to detect trends in those habitats over time and assess changes in ecological function of habitats over time. The project selected monitoring locations in each of the major bay segments and two tidal river locations that have a full complement of emergent tidal wetland communities, including the following:

Mangrove
Salt marsh
Salt barrens
Coastal uplands

The project conducted a pilot assessment at Upper Tampa Bay Park in August 2014 and the methods were then refined by the Habitat Partnership. This project is part of a larger effort to manage, restore and protect the mosaic of coastal habitats critical to the ecological function of the Tampa Bay estuary.

Financing

Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP): The CBEP is co‐sponsoring a Financing Resilience Workshop Series, with the New England Environmental Finance Center and Maine Department of Environmental Protection, for municipal officials on financing climate resilience and stormwater‐related projects. The workshops provides training to local officials and gather information on the barriers they face when applying for grants to address resilience needs. Findings will be shared with the Maine Climate Council and members of Maine’s Climate Change Adaptation Providers Network.

Adaptation Plans

Sarasota Bay Estuary Program (SBEP): In 2014, EPA’s Climate Ready Estuaries (CRE) program prompted SBEP (located in Florida) to collaborate with Mote Marine Lab to develop the Sea Level Rise Adaptation Planning Guide. The guide provides information about basic considerations and tools to adapt to climate-related sea level rise. The audiences for the guide include the following:

Local community leaders
Planners
Resource managers
Concerned individuals

The SBEP also managed the creation of a regional Sea Level Rise Visualization Tool. The tool demonstrates projections of flooding associated with varied levels of sea level rise, in addition to storm surge effects.

The SBEP continues to engage the local community on sea level rise adaptation and resiliency planning.

Vulnerability Assessments

Coastal and Heartland National Estuary Partnership (CHNEP): The EPA Climate Ready Estuaries (CRE) program helps coastal managers:

assess climate change vulnerabilities;
develop and implement adaptation strategies;
engage stakeholders; and
share lessons learned.

With EPA CRE support, CHNEP and partner Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council developed a comprehensive report evaluating climate change vulnerabilities in southwest Florida. The team used the latest scientific information in developing the report.

In addition, the partnership developed key tools that local governments can utilize. These resources include:

model language for local government climate change adaptation plans;
a list of climate change environmental indicators; and
a climate change conceptual ecological model.

The partnership also teamed with the city of Punta Gorda (in Lee County, Florida) to develop a climate change adaptation plan that reflects citizen input and community priorities. In its role, CHNEP held public workshops and facilitated the planning process, which included analyzing the city's climate change vulnerabilities, and developing mitigation strategies and adaptation techniques, as well as an implementation framework for the identified actions.

The plan underwent public, city staff and council review before it was unanimously accepted in November 2009. The adaptation plan serves as a sourcebook of ideas to make the city more resilient. Further, the city’s adaptation planning model subsequently served as a model for Lee County’s government.

These communities are taking on the complex, long-range challenge of climate change with plans that provide a basis for incremental actions. This approach can make a significant difference in the long run without tremendous upfront costs. Punta Gorda's plan includes a total of prioritized acceptable and unacceptable adaptation options as defined through group consensus.

Moreover, Punta Gorda's plan indicates which areas will retain natural shorelines and constrain locations for certain high-risk infrastructure. The community has the data and analysis, as well as a framework to consider the menu of adaptation options that make sense at any point in time.