Climate change impacts, such as flooding, hurricanes, and sea level rise, are impacting coastlines worldwide. As a result, there is action to minimize the impacts on coastal communities and ecosystems. Built structural engineering approaches have traditionally been used to mitigate undesirable impacts, but such options are expensive and inflexible to dynamic, rapidly changing coastal systems. As a result, more flexible nature-based or hybrid (structural and nature-based) approaches have gained traction. Despite the potential for more favorable benefit-cost ratios, one of the barriers to widespread consideration of these solutions has been a framework that explicitly accounts for environmental and societal goals in addition to the exposure reduction provided by such projects. The Adaptation Gradients Framework was developed by the Sustainable Adaptive Gradients in the Coastal Environment (SAGE; http://www.resilient-infrastructure.org/) to holistically and systematically evaluate a broader range of objectives for coastal resiliency projects.
Results/Conclusions
The Adaptation Gradients Framework includes eight gradients: exposure reduction, cost efficiency, institutional capacity, ecological enhancement, adaptation over time, greenhouse gas reduction, participatory process, and social benefits. The gradients were evaluated through the development of a case study, engagement with project leads, and an expert scoring exercise. We applied the Adaptation Gradient Framework to a coastal resilience project supported by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources via Maryland’s Coastal Resilience Grant Program. The project, Hurst Creek, is located two miles east of Cambridge, Maryland. The proposed Hurst Creek Resiliency Project will re-establish a stable, functioning aquatic ecosystem that provides a full range of benefits including restoration of wetlands, open water habitat, shoreline stabilization and protection from erosion, boating access to the Choptank River, and increased resiliency in the face of climate change and changing sea levels. In this presentation, I will discuss the gradient scoring process, scores for Hurst Creek, and recommendations given the scoring. Additionally, I will discuss opportunities to use the Adaptation Gradients Framework to support the development and application of programmatic metrics, which are under development and being explored this year through a project with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.