Crisfield Nature-Based Strategies Research: Community Workshop #3

This community workshop will bring together essential local stakeholders to discuss Crisfield's resilience planning and flood mitigation work, and how coastal nature-based strategies (like saltmarsh restoration, sand dune restoration, artificial oyster reefs, and living breakwaters) can complement and work together with proposed land-based hard infrastructure (like raising roads, creating berms, installing pumps and repairing tide gates).  The community will discuss results from the most recent round of EPA ORD storm attenuation modeling and how, where, and when natural infrastructure can help decrease wave energy, and, therefore, decrease storm damage, erosion, and inundation speed.  The community will then explore calculated co-benefits associated with different natural infrastructure strategies based on Crisfield's elicited resilience goals, and compare options and tradeoffs among different potential natural infrastructure projects based on Crisfield's priorities.

Impact/Purpose

This community workshop is vital to the process of research co-development with impacted stakeholders to ensure local values, perspectives, preferences, and knowledge are incorporated into research design and implementation, so that results are relevant for the community whose challenges are being addressed.  Discussing tradeoffs among calculated storm attenuation capabilities and co-benefits of different natural infrastructure options will allow the community to use research results to move forward with funding applications and project building.

Citation

Eisenhauer, E., R. Kashuba, S. Yee, AND R. Hostak. Crisfield Nature-Based Strategies Research: Community Workshop #3. Crisfield Community Workshop, Crisfield, MD, July 10, 2025.

• CRISFIELD_NATURE-BASED_STRATEGIES RESEARCH_COMMUNITY WORKSHOP #3.PDF (PDF)  (NA  pp, 3.5 MB, about PDF)