Nathan J Wood

National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) along the East Coast of the United States protect habitat for a host of wildlife species, while also offering storm surge protection, improving water quality, supporting nurseries for commercially important fish and shellfish, and providing recreation opportunities for coastal communities. Yet in the last century, coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S. have been severely altered by human development activities as well as sea-level rise and more frequent extreme events related to climate change. These influences threaten the ability of NWRs to protect our nation’s natural resources and to sustain their many beneficial services. Through this project, researchers are collaborating with...

Categories: Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2015, Adaptive management, CASC, Completed, Data Visualization & Tools, All tags... Data Visualization & Tools, Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, Extreme Weather, Extreme Weather, Forests, Forests, Landscapes, Landscapes, Projects by Region, Science Tools for Managers, Science Tools for Managers, Sea-Level Rise and Coasts, Sea-Level Rise and Coasts, Social Science, Social Science, Southeast, Southeast CASC, State of the Science, State of the Science, Water, Coasts and Ice, Water, Coasts and Ice, coastal refuge, global change, optimization, portfolio analysis, reserve design, resource allocation, sea-level rise, structured decision making, Fewer tags

This data release is comprised of a set of eight time travel map shapefiles (two tsunami inundation zones and four travel times) for use in GIS software applications and two population exposure by travel time tables (residents and nonresidences) for use in GIS software applications and other standalone spreadsheet applications. The travel time map was generated using the Pedestrian Evacuation Analyst model (version 1.0.1 for ArcGIS 10.5) from the USGS (https://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/vulnerability/tools.html). The travel time analysis uses ESRI's Path Distance tool to find the shortest distance across a cost surface from any point in the hazard zone to a safe zone. This cost analysis considers the direction...

Tags: American Samoa, Geography, Land Use Change, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), evacuation, All tags... hazards, modeling, pedestrian, tsunamis, Fewer tags

Vehicular Demand estimation for short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuation of Bay Farm Island, CA

Distant tsunamis require short-notice evacuations in coastal communities to minimize threats to life safety. Given the available time to evacuate and potential distances out of hazard zones, coastal transportation planners and emergency managers can expect large proportions of populations to evacuate using vehicles. A community-wide, short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuation is challenging because it creates a sudden, significant, and concentrated demand on road-network systems. Transportation planners and emergency managers need methods to help them determine if a road network can handle an evacuation surge and if not, where interventions can best reduce overall clearance times. We use the coastal community of Bay...

Categories: Data; Tags: Bay Farm Island, Alameda County, California, USA, Hazard Risk and Vulnerability, Simulation Modeling, geoscientificInformation

Multiple climate change-driven tipping points for coastal systems

As the climate evolves over the next century, the interaction of accelerating sea level rise (SLR) and storms, combined with confining development and infrastructure, will place greater stresses on physical, ecological, and human systems along the ocean-land margin. Many of these valued coastal systems could reach “tipping points,” at which hazard exposure substantially increases and threatens the present-day form, function, and viability of communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Determining the timing and nature of these tipping points is essential for effective climate adaptation planning. Here we present a multidisciplinary case study from Santa Barbara, California (USA), to identify potential climate change-related...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation

Tsunami evacuation time map for the island of O'ahu, Hawai'i, extreme tsunami evacuation zone and fast walk speed

The travel time map was generated using the Pedestrian Evacuation Analyst model from the USGS (https://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/vulnerability/tools.html). The travel time analysis uses ESRI's Path Distance tool to find the shortest distance across a cost surface from any point in the hazard zone to a safe zone. This cost analysis considers the direction of movement and assigns a higher cost to steeper slopes, based on a table contained within the model. The analysis also adds in the energy costs of crossing different types of land cover, assuming that less energy is expended walking along a road than walking across a sandy beach. To produce the time map, the evacuation surface output from the model is grouped...

Categories: Data; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service, Shapefile; Tags: Hawaii, Honolulu County, Oahu, evacuation, modeling, All tags... pedestrian, tsunamis, vulnerability, Fewer tags