This cooperative agreement, part of the suite of North Atlantic LCC Hurricane Sandy Marsh resilience projects, will increase understanding of how marshes across a range of conditions in the Northeast are likely to respond to sea level rise and storms. We will parameterize coupled marsh and hydrodynamic models for estuaries in the Northeast affected by Hurricane Sandy. The model will be applied to Plum Island Sound, MA in 2015. In the second year of the project, the Hydro-MEM model will be applied to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, in coastal NJ, the John H. Chafee National Wildlife Refuge, in Rhode Island and the back barrier marsh complexes from the inlet of Chesapeake Bay to Ocean City MD, including the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland and the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
The objective of this project is to forecast the evolution of marsh landscapes under different sea-level rise scenarios with and without marsh restoration and added storm surge modeling.
