NSF Award
1939943
The changing Arctic environment brings both risk and opportunity to coastal New England. Arctic ice melt connects northern ports through new economic activities such as shipping, trade, resource extraction, fishing, and tourism, even as it accelerates sea level rise, severe weather, and other ecological changes. More resilient locales can expect increased migration from more vulnerable areas. While many communities are developing local coastal adaptation plans focused on specific problems such as infrastructure planning, natural resource management, and emergency response, fewer are comprehensively linking economic, demographic, and ecological forces. A workshop in Portland, Maine will consider the resilient urban planning and landscape design needed for smaller cities and towns of northern New England to grow into the future vibrant, sustainable, and adaptable coastal cities of 2100. Stronger partnerships among scientific, business, governmental, non-profit, and neighborhood groups will advance the exploration of visionary futures and expand the scope of research and educational initiatives that inform coastal climate adaptation.<br/><br/>A central workshop goal is to determine what types of data and knowledge will help communities align incremental adjustments with more integrated visioning of uncertain futures involving urbanization, in-migration, and transformative paradigms in science and engineering. Workshop discussions will highlight the built environment and implications of more diversified economic and demographic futures for socio-ecological resilience, thereby embracing uncertainty and anticipating transformative change. A primary outcome will be a collection of student internship projects engaging communities and private industry in coastlines and people science through student learning as a boundary spanning activity. Workshop outcomes will benefit society by developing an understanding of how coastal resilience to environmental variability and hazards might synergize with urbanization and economic growth.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
