Suggested citation: Schrass, K. and A.V. Mehta. 2017. Improved Use and Understanding of NNBF in the Mid-Atlantic. Annapolis, MD: National Wildlife Federation.
Executive Summary
The impacts of climate change are already being felt in the Mid-Atlantic region. Coastal communities and habitats are threatened by sea level rise and an increasing frequency and severity of strong storms. Traditionally, gray infrastructure like seawalls and bulkheads have been used to protect coasts; however, these approaches disrupt intact ecological systems and exacerbate damage along adjacent shorelines. As a result, Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) are increasingly being explored as a means of adapting to climate change while also providing numerous economic, ecological, and societal co-benefits that are not derived from traditional gray infrastructure. While significant work has been done at the state and local level across the region, coordinated regional approaches to NNBF are still nascent. To move the entire Mid-Atlantic NNBF community forward towards wider and more informed implementation of NNBF, we sought to answer the most pressing questions concerning their use, and to facilitate collaboration amongst practitioners across organizations and geographies.
Feedback collected from interviews conducted with stakeholders from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia demonstrated that the highest priority barriers to implementation were around building the case for NNBF, initial site assessment, project design, permitting, and post-implementation performance monitoring. Diverse groups of stakeholders were invited to brainstorm the best approaches for addressing these barriers. This report is a summary of the key solution-ideas that resulted from these conversations.
