THE LATEST HAPPENINGS

New Hampshire Great Bay Estuary Ecosystem Services Assessment

This project helps to build a spatial planning framework for the Great Bay estuary, with an emphasis on utilizing ecosystem services modeling to better integrate and scale-up ongoing estuarine habitat restoration work while minimizing conflicts with siting and permitting decisions pertaining to other space-dependent estuarine uses (e.g., mooring fields, marinas, aquaculture leases). The project integrates existing spatial information on climate change vulnerability into the estuarine spatial planning framework. This objective ensures that a recently completed effort to generate high-quality coastal vulnerability maps for every coastal town in New Hampshire under scenarios of sea level rise and storm surge is incorporated into holistic spatial planning efforts for the state’s estuaries. Blue carbon is estimated as an ecosystem service.

Project Lead

New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Coastal Program

Funding

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, The Nature Conservancy, and the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership
$99,930

Time Frame

Start: September 1, 2013
End: May 1, 2016

Fat Dog Shellfish