Flooding on N.C. 12 on Pea Island in Dare County. Photo courtesy of NCDOTcommunications/Flickr, CC BY 2.0. As local governments throughout the South Atlantic struggle to adapt to sea-level rise, they're faced with a number of legal challenges. I'm sure you can think of at least 1 regularly flooded coastal road where you [...]
Shared from Rua's post on the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy blog Southeast Blueprint Version 3.0 identifies high value areas for conservation and restoration across the Southeast and Caribbean. Southeast Conservation Blueprint 3.0 data are now final and ready for you to use. The major improvements in this version include: Integration of new data from the Texas Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT): This fills in [...]
Lately I've been helping the Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) improve the mapping of their priorities. SERPPAS is a six-state partnership comprised of state and federal agencies that promotes collaboration in making resource-use decisions supporting conservation of natural resources, working lands, and national defense. A big focus of the partnership is facilitating actions in [...]
A couple of weeks ago, the directors of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) unanimously approved an explicit goal for Southeastern ecosystems. This was a high priority improvement in the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS). I've been talking about the steps leading up to this goal in my last few blog posts. [...]
Setting goals for the future is hard. It never feels like we have enough data and the future is so uncertain. That said, goals can be a powerful way to bring in new resources and stay focused on outcomes. A couple of months ago, I talked about assessing the state of the Southeastern ecosystems. This [...]
Alvin collects a sample of Lophelia pertusa from an extensive mound of both dead and live coral. Image copyright Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The new and exciting discoveries from deep water dives in the South Atlantic just keep on coming. You might have seen my previous post about cool stuff the Okeanos dives [...]
How are the ecosystems of the Southeast doing? How is that changing over time? I've been working on integrating ecosystem assessments across the Southeast to get at those key questions, primarily to support a major task this year for the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS): developing an explicit and near-term goal. The big idea is trying [...]
Many people less familiar with the offshore waters of the South Atlantic ask about this long swath of Blueprint priority going down the Atlantic. I've circled the general area in black in the picture below. It's a particularly interesting area at the continental margin where a mix of currents and substrate support a rich and [...]
Here are a few of the updates and new resources planned for the fall Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) update: Update of the Texas part of the Blueprint using new information from the Texas Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT). With this update, the Blueprint will provide seamless coverage over most of the United States. Integrated [...]
There are a bunch of really interesting landscape features and patterns of diversity around us that were formed millions of years ago. It's easy to forget that, when the first primates emerged around 35 million years ago, you could walk on dry land pretty far into what's now the Atlantic Ocean. If you go even [...]