The Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program (CHNEP) is a partnership working to protect the natural environment in Florida from Venice to Bonita Springs to Winter Haven. The CHNEP hosts the Charlotte Harbor Watershed Summit every three years to learn about current research and restoration efforts, critical environmental issues affecting the Charlotte Harbor watershed and to review progress since the preceding summit. Summits are important in the CHNEP process of bringing public and private stakeholders together. This video is of one of the 43 presentations given during the March 25-27, 2014 summit. Visit www.CHNEP.org/Summit2014.html to learn more and see PDF files of posters and sponsors. This summit was made possible by all the speakers who donated their time and to sponsors. Building Coastal Resilience in the Charlotte Harbor Region and Beyond L. Geselbracht, lgeselbracht@tnc.org K. Freeman, kfreeman@tnc.org C. Shepard, cshepard@tnc.org A. Birch, abirch@tnc.org The Nature Conservancy, 222 S. Westmonte Drive, Altamonte Springs, Florida 32714 Sea level is rising and coastal communities around the world will be affected. Coastal communities in the Charlotte Harbor region are no exception. Regional planners and scientists have begun to characterize the additional threats that will be faced and communities have begun identifying and implementing adaptation strategies. The CHNEP is supporting this work. Over the last three years, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has engaged in a multifaceted approach to advance coastal resilience across the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and more specifically in the Charlotte Harbor region by engaging in research, planning, community engagement, partnerships and stewardship. The Charlotte Harbor region is one of the state and national frontrunners with respect to recognizing the vulnerabilities that will result from accelerating sea level rise. Not only have area governments recognized and identified their vulnerabilities, they have begun to act on them by creating and implementing adaption plans. In this presentation, we will describe how TNC's's coastal resilience work supports the workshop theme: "Our Vision in Action" as it pertains to CHNEP priority action SG-Q. For actions involving partnerships, we will describe how the partnerships formed and the value they have added to the project. Portions of TNC's Coastal Resilience work that will be highlighted include: * Science/Research - The modeling of sea level rise impacts on coastal wetland systems to quantify and spatially characterize the potential future condition of these natural systems and adjacent uplands/built environment, and how use of these results can help to identify vulnerabilities and develop management solutions; * Planning - The locally relevant adaptation strategies developed with regional stakeholders that build on and support the adaptation strategies developed through local planning activities. * Tools - The Gulf Restoration Decision Support System (DSS), a web-based tool that supports adaptation planning by enabling users to explore the SLR modeling results and other data (natural resource, socio-economic, storm surge risk) in their areas of interest; * Collaboration - Our work with the City of Punta Gorda is assisting them with the identification of areas that will retain natural shorelines (not hardened; a top agreed upon strategy from the City of Punta Gorda Adaptation Plan, 2009); and * Restoration/Stewardship/Partnerships - An oyster reef restoration pilot project in the Charlotte Harbor system (initially off the City of Punta Gorda) that will inform resource managers on best approaches for scaling up the size of projects ultimately leading to projects that can help stabilize shorelines vulnerable to SLR in the Charlotte Harbor system and enhance protection from storm surge. Collectively, these components of our coastal resilience work support and inform each other and have become stronger as community involvement and partnerships have grown. The work being done in Charlotte Harbor has relevance to all the estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico.

• published: 29 Apr 2014
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