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Coastal Resilience and Regional Adaptation

IMG 1817 Camp Lejeune Flooding Florence MCAS Cherry Point Future Mtg Living Shoreline Bogue Field

About

Extreme weather events and changes in environmental conditions, including hazards such as hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise, and wildfires, put military readiness, natural resources, communities, and working lands at risk.  These serious threats to mission assurance and mission-essential functions require collaboration to successfully enhance resilience across geographical and governance boundaries. 

The SERPPAS Coastal Resilience and Regional Adaptation Work Group fosters collaboration among Federal, State, and local partners to build capacity, develop plans, share resources, and implement projects that increase resilience for military installations and communities. With a specific focus on comprehensive planning and integrating natural infrastructure into the resilience strategies, the Work Group provides significant benefits to all partners and their respective missions. This increase in shared knowledge, resources, and tools will serve to better conserve and protect our people, our military installations, our lands, waters, and wildlife, our towns and cities, our forests and farms, our economic opportunity, and our quality of life.

Regional collaboration and coordination on resilience strategies will help sustain the military mission by: minimizing loss of coastal training infrastructure or interruption of operations; minimizing  the potential for new coastal species placement on the endangered species list and/or critical habitat designated in the vicinity of military installations; prioritizing watershed protection for increased water supply resilience and flood mitigation; minimizing damage to storm water systems and other utilities shared between bases and communities; and increase the effectiveness of joint installation and community planning for and adapting to severe climate change impacts.

Strategic Objectives

  1. Continue building partnerships and capacity focused on connecting DoD installations and surrounding communities on resilience planning and actions, with an initial focus in coastal areas.
  2. Enhance the SERPPAS Good Map by adding resilience- related data that will help identify vulnerabilities to climate and weather-related risks as well as identify further research and data gaps needs.
  3. Develop plans and implement projects involving nature-based solutions, such as living shorelines, oyster reefs, and saltmarsh conservation, based on DoD and community vulnerabilities and natural and cultural resource benefits.
  4. Develop and share resources on authorities, funding, and tools from key federal and state agencies focused on resilience to changing environmental conditions to assist on the ground projects and identify future needs.
  5. Continue to explore how extreme weather and changing environmental conditions are influencing the other SERPPAS focus areas and identify opportunities to collaborate.
  6. Explore opportunities to evaluate and measure success of nature-based, natural infrastructure solutions in lessening vulnerabilities to climate and weather-related events impacting military installation resilience.
  7. Consider how best to expand and include participation of Federal, State and local partners that are focused on community resilience but have not historically been part of the SERPPAS community.

Work Group Lead

Michelle Covi photo
Michelle Covi
Coastal Resilience DoD Liaison
Georgia Sea Grant/SERPPAS
mcovi@uga.edu

Michelle Covi is the Coastal Resilience DoD Liaison at University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant working regionally in the Southeast to connect Sea Grant programs with military community coastal resilience projects through a partnership with SERPPAS and the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program.

Michelle comes to Georgia after six years as a coastal resilience lead in the Virginia Sea Grant extension program with Old Dominion University and six years with a coastal hazards center at East Carolina University where she also completed her Ph.D. in Coastal Resources Management. Michelle is a UGA alumna, having received her master’s degree in zoology (marine science) after completing research at the UGA Marine Institute. She lives on her husband’s family farm in Hartwell, Georgia, just a couple of miles from the Savannah River

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