Storm Stories: Communicating Hurricane Impacts using Monitoring Data and Visualizations - NERRS/NSC(NERRS Science Collaborative)

By pairing water quality and meteorological data with visible impacts, reserves can illustrate storm impacts and connect local communities to science.

The project

This project developed through conversations among the southeast and Caribbean region National Estuarine Research Reserves while discussing the need to respond to regional hurricanes including Dorian, Michael, Florence, Maria, Irma, and Matthew. Storm events damage not only the built infrastructure of local communities, but also the natural areas within and surrounding the reserves. The reserves wanted tools to help communicate about storm impacts using monitoring data and information collected through the System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP), including salinity, dissolved oxygen, wind speed and direction, rainfall, and water depth. By pairing water quality and meteorological data with visible impacts, reserves can illustrate storm impacts and connect local communities to science.

The final communications products include pictures, hurricane path maps, SWMP data analyses and visualizations, and text to help connect the quantitative storm story to the visual impacts observed in reserve local communities. Tools that enable communication about storms with local communities allow reserve educators and local teachers to discuss storm event impacts with their students. They also enable the Coastal Training Program to communicate with natural resource managers and local decision makers about observed negative environmental changes such as fish kills, increases in invasive vegetation, and native vegetation die-off.

The impact

Reserves gain access to templates – created using R Studio, Excel, PowerPoint, and ArcGIS Story Map – and an intuitive, replicable companion document that helps reserves and reserve staff analyze, visualize, and contextualize storm events. These tools help illustrate how hurricanes impact coastal communities and water quality.

Outreach and communications enhance awareness of SWMP data and the coordinated monitoring programs of the NERRS that help improve resilience and decision-making ability for resource managers. The products and processes also demonstrate new ways SWMP data can be incorporated into NERRS programming.

The products developed via this project are expandable to all NERRS and transferable to different extreme weather events experienced by reserves. Both the templates and the process used to develop them can be adapted for other regions, programs, and organizations interested in communicating about storm events using monitoring data.

Project Lead(s):

Kaitlyn Dietz, Guana Tolomato Matanzas NERR, Kaithlyn.Dietz@FloridaDEP.gov

The distributor does not assume liability.

None

Cite this dataset when used as a source: NOAA retains the right to analyze, synthesize and publish summaries of the NERRS/NSC data. The NERRS/NSC retains the right to be fully credited for having collected and process the data. Following academic courtesy standards, the NERR site where the data were collected should be contacted and fully acknowledged in any subsequent publications in which any part of the data are used. The data enclosed within this package/transmission are only as accurate as the quality assurance and quality control procedures that are described in the associated metadata reporting statement allow. The user bears all responsibility for its subsequent use/misuse in any further analyses or comparisons. The Federal government does not assume liability to the Recipient or third persons, nor will the Federal government reimburse or indemnify the Recipient for its liability due to any losses resulting in any way from the use of this data. Requested citation format: NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) Science Collaborative(NSC).

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This information is detailed within the project links.

This information is detailed within the project links.