Sea Level Rise

Documents and Examples:

• North Carolina Sea Level Rise Illustrations developed by Ben Poulter while graduate student at Duke
  • NC Sea Level Rise - Present Conditions
  • NC Sea Level Rise - 10 cm
  • NC Sea Level Rise - 23 cm
  • NC Sea Level Rise - 40 cm
  • NC Sea Level Rise - 61 cm
• Resilience in Practice: Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea by Rod Salm

Please Participate in the Learning and Conversations & Give Us Your Input:

• Discussion Page (for feedback and conversation)
• Adaptation@tnc.org (for email submission of questions, input and feedback) 

A new paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters (http://papers.risingsea.net/ERL) creates sea level rise planning maps (http://plan.risingsea.net) that show the business as usual response to rising sea level, based on land use plans from 130 local government along the US Atlantic coast.

About 60% of the land vulnerable to sea level rise is likely to be developed and protected, about 10% is conservation land; the remaining 30% is mostly farms and forests in rural areas.

In Maryland (http://plan.risingsea.net/Maryland.html), the Critical Areas Act limits the likelihood of shore protection along much of the Eastern Shore and Potomac River; in Virginia (http://risingsea.net/ERL/VA.html), the upper tidal portions of many rivers are still rural.

The report also concludes that federal nationwide wetland permits for shore protection violate Clean Water Act due to the cumulative environmental impact.

This type of assessment is useful for long-term infrastructure planning as sea level rises, because the type of facilities appropriate for an area likely to be abandoned to the rising sea is very different from what is appropriate for an area that will be elevated or protected by a dike.

A few communities in Florida are using the sea level rise planning maps as a strawman to plan which communities to protect and where to let ecosystems migrate inland. Because these maps depict the choices confronting coastal residents as sea level rises, they may be a more constructive graphic for engaging people than elevation maps implying that all low lands will be submerged.

State-specific summaries (http://risingsea.net/ERL/MD.html) and GIS data (http://risingsea.net/ERL/data.html) from the underlying $2 million study by EPA are also available (http://risingsea.net/ERL).