Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

Poster Abstract: Habitat Protection and Restoration as a Means of Mitigating the Effects of Natural Hazards-The NOAA Habitat Program Perspective

Cecelia Linder and Kimberly Lellis

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874011.ch33

Poster Abstract.—Hazard resilient communities is one of three programmatic priority areas for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA seeks to integrate hazard prediction and response capabilities and promote partnerships to better prepare the nation’s increasingly vulnerable coastal communities, as well as to protect and rebuild from natural disasters. As members of coastal communities rely on fisheries for their livelihood, resiliency to hazards includes elements of health of fisheries stocks and depends on the mitigative effects that intact, functioning habitats provide. NOAA currently supports a variety of habitat restoration and protection efforts that mitigate the effects of natural hazards. Living shoreline projects have helped protect against specific events (e.g., hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico), as well as against chronic hazards such as shoreline erosion (e.g., Chesapeake Bay). Derelict dams and poorly planned levees block fisheries access to upstream and floodplain habitat and can often amplify the flooding risk to riverfront communities. Larger scale restoration in Louisiana also provides an excellent example of how the agency currently is engaged in promoting community resiliency through habitat protection and restoration. As coastal zones become more developed, communities more frequently derive multiple benefits from ecosystem services provided through habitat protection and restoration projects.