Tools and Learning Resources
Links to trainings, tools, webinars and materials relevant to Virginia's coastal decision makers
Trainings
- Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional Program - Provides a system of materials and consistent instruction across the Bay region, creating a community of certified professionals to be better stormwater partners and environmental stewards. Offerings include a certification program, and workshops on riparian buffers; calendar HERE.
- NOAA's Digital Coast Academy
Offering a wide range of learning resources. 101 video on Digital Coast HERE. - Whole-Community Coastal Climate Resilience Planning
Planners, local officials and community leaders can take this online training to learn about a new framework for holistic, community-based resilience planning to more equitably and meaningfully engage historically underrepresented and vulnerable communities in resilience planning.
Tools and Tool Portals
- Adapting Stormwater Management for Coastal Floods
Communities can use this website to determine how the flooding of today and tomorrow can affect their stormwater systems, and generate reports that can be used to: 1) display local information about the current and future flooding impacts, and 2) inform planning efforts. - AdaptVA
Provides an interface to consider multiple aspects of the coastal plain simultaneously, using infrastructure and natural resource inventories, flood risk maps, water level forecasts, story maps, and policy information - Chesapeake Bay Environmental Forecasting System
Simulates dissolved-oxygen and acidification metrics throughout the Chesapeake Bay - Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System
Provides meteorological, oceanographic and water-quality data - Chesapeake Behavior Change
Provides resources, best practices and case studies toward behavior change in Bay - Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative Data Explorer
A portal to all of the data collected (including water quality, and benthic macroinvertebrates) through the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative - Climate Central
Offering Coastal Risk Finder and Floodvision RiskViewer. - CoastWatch - East Coast Node
Provides timely access to near real-time satellite data to monitor, restore and manage U.S. coastal ocean resources, and understand climate variability and change. - Georgetown Climate Center
Legal and Policy Toolkits for Informed Decisionmaking - How's My Waterway?
Designed to provide water quality information on local waterways (EPA) - Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS)
A step-by-step guide through the process of identifying and downloading climate change scenarios—or projections—relevant to an interest or research question. - Locating and Selecting Scenarios Online (LASSO)
A step-by-step guide through the process of identifying and downloading climate change scenarios—or projections—relevant to an interest or research question. - Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal
An online toolkit and resource center that consolidates available data and enables state, federal and local users to visualize and analyze ocean resources and human use information such as fishing grounds, recreational areas, shipping lanes, habitat areas, and energy sites, among others. - NOAA's Digital Coast Tools
81 unique tools that help interpret data through a variety of outputs and visualizations; 101 video on Digital Coast HERE - Reduce Flood Risk
Live or work in a flood-prone area? Reduce Flood Risk can be your guide. - Resilience in a Box
Resources to guide companies toward addressing preparedness issues while building in flexibility to handle potential business interruptions - Rural America Placemaking Toolkit
A resource to identify placemaking projects that align with your community capacity - Shoreline Decision Support Tool
An interactive guidance system that provides the user with a recommended shoreline erosion control strategy - Sustainable Shorescapes
A primer on approaches, benefits and actions - Wetland Mapping and Inventorying Tools
A compilation of informative tools and links to provide context in wetland assessment - VECOS: Virginia Estuarine and Coastal Observing System
Designed to distribute the results of water quality and meteorological data monitoring efforts from the Chesapeake Bay and associated tributaries within Virginia
Webinars
- 2022 Communicating Science Seminar (archived)
These AAAS sessions include: "Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence in Public Engagement with Science" and "Building Connections and Reciprocity Between Scientists and Communities." - Building a National Movement to Prevent Trauma and Foster Resilience Workshop Series (archived)
Providing stakeholders, advocates and practitioners with the tools necessary to encourage and assist systems in every community in integrating trauma-informed, resilience-focused, and healing-centered approaches and principles into their daily operations, thereby making America trauma-informed. - Chesapeake Research Consortium Roundtable (ongoing and archived)
A monthly virtual seminar series, to host targeted, inclusive, and informed conversations matching scientific advances and management needs in a way that moves us collectively forward toward decision-making for effective and sustainable management of the Chesapeake Bay, its watershed, and its living resources. - Integrating Water Quality and Natural Hazard Mitigation Planning (archived)
In this webcast, experts discuss how to align program goals and activities to create a cooperative, coordinated water protection and hazard mitigation approach. - Open Channels Webinar Archives (archived)
A variety of webinars focused on sustainable management and conservation - Water Research Webinar Series (ongoing)
EPA's Office of Research and Development hosts this webinar series to share current research activities and results. Through innovative science and engineering, EPA’s researchers are developing cost-effective, sustainable solutions to 21st century complex water issues. The scientific results and innovative technologies developed support EPA’s mandate to protect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of our Nation’s water resources, and to ensure safe drinking water and water systems.
Materials
- Application Guide for the 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report - Landing page for Sea Level Rise Technical Report Overview and Application Guide.
- Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency - Reports (Varied reports on coastal hazards and sea level rise in Virginia)
- Management, Policy, Science and Engineering of Nonstructural Erosion Control in the Chesapeake Bay: Proceedings of the 2006 Living Shoreline Summit. This document contains information designed for coastal managers, policy-makers, landowners, marine contractors, engineers, scientists, and regulators on the practice of, construction of, and case studies for living shorelines. Proceedings Full Document
- Recommendations for Reducing Wetland Loss in Coastal Watersheds of the U.S. - Interagency Coastal Wetlands Workgroup. 2022. EPA Publication EPA-840-R-22001.
Portals and Clearinghouses
- Climate Alliance
Providing a wide variety of needs in municipal climate action: from general instruments to those with a regional focus, and from aides for beginners all the way to support for climate action role model communities - Floodplain management resources (VA DCR)
- Georgetown Climate Center's Adaptation Clearinghouse
- Restoration Resources - Resources for effective restoration in the Middle Peninsula
Misc.
- COVID on the Coast: Capturing the Story of What Happened, How We're Coping and What's Next - A 3-part series highlighting the challenges, solutions and silver linings surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact in coastal Virginia. Click on the links below for more.
- View the COVID on the Coast trailer here.
- Panel 1: Government officials, including representatives from federal, state, regional and local agencies
- Panel 2: Educators, including formal and informal practitioners
- Panel 3: Research scientists and managers, including academic and regulatory representatives
- Resource Bank: Additional resources to supplement recorded conversations and inspire solutions