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Create and Share Your Own Vision for Jamaica Bay with the Newly-Launched Visionmaker: Jamaica Bay
Public Leaders Reiterate the Need for SRIJB Science
Prospects for Resilience Expected to Publish in Fall 2016
New Observation Equipment is Helping Researchers Monitor the Pulse of the Bay
Recent Findings Suggest the Need for More Community-based Science and Engagement in Jamaica Bay
Strengthening Coastal Research Capacity with an SRIJB Research Boat
SRIJB Job Opportunity: Coastal Extension Specialist
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Resilience in Jamaica Bay: Experiment, experience, and our collective context
Adam Parris
 Moving to New York City in the winter is underrated. It can be tough at first. Imagine a harsh environment with snow drifts blowing back a city that bustles in spite of itself. You get acquainted with the hard urban edges on the icy and treacherous commute. But, as things begin to thaw, the City becomes the epitome of spring – life. Life in all forms – human, natural, industrial – bound together by water on all sides. It is inspiring and reminds me that, while surging waters are a defining impact of our times, water is also a critical measure of the City’s vitality, health, and well-being. Tucked between Brooklyn, Queens, and the Rockaway Peninsula, Jamaica Bay is one of those aquatic vital signs – itself an indicator of resilience. Continue reading
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Create and Share Your Own Vision for Jamaica Bay with the Newly-Launched Visionmaker: Jamaica Bay
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SRIJB is pleased to feature Visionmaker: Jamaica Bay, a new web application designed to enable anyone (land managers, politicians, neighborhood residents, school children, etc.) to develop and share climate-resilient designs for their own neighborhoods in the Jamaica Bay watershed. Visionmaker builds on the Welikia project and a growing trend in environmental planning using Internet-enabled approaches that combine environmental modeling, scenario analysis, geographically explicit data, and social media tools to plan better environments cooperatively.
Visionmaker NYC
Visionmaker was developed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York City and adapted for Jamaica Bay through one of many grants to SRIJB research institutions from the Department of Interior’s National Park Service (NPS).
Eric Sanderson, a senior ecologist at WCS and the project's lead, unveiled the new tool at a workshop at the New York Aquarium on July 17, 2015. The workshop, hosted by WCS and Cornell University in partnership with Rutgers University and the New York Sea Grant, was the kick off to a series of workshops in the coming months.
"In the summer and fall, we will reach out to
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different groups in Jamaica Bay. Visionmaker will be used as a way to deepen conversations about how people understand their communities and imagine them in the future," said Sanderson.
Adam Parris, Executive Director of SRIJB, remarked that the tool is an important part of the Institute's efforts to strengthen community resilience and integrated planning. "We hope to use Visionmaker to help bridge visions of the Bay held by local communities with some of the formal planning efforts underway by local, state and federal agencies. In combination with other promising tools that we aim to adapt, such as the NOAA-supported Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, we are building a robust science approach to support disaster risk mitigation and adaptation planning across the Bay."
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Public Leaders Reiterate the Need for SRIJB Science
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Twenty-six public entities share responsibility for managing Jamaica Bay’s watershed. Although improving the resilience of the Bay’s coastal region is a priority for many of them, finding supportive ways to work together is challenged by the complexity of urban governance. The establishment of SRIJB is helping to make this a little easier. Not only have NPS and the city come together in partnership to help create SRIJB as an organization, but through the coordination activities of the Institute, a wider group of public agencies now comes together as the SRIJB Public Agency Council.
Co-chaired by Dan Zarrilli, Director of the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency for the City of New York, and Venetia Lannon, Regional Director of the NYC office of the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, the Council is a unique and timely forum for agency leaders to share knowledge about ongoing resilience activities and collectively set priorities for the types of science they need to improve decision-making.
"DEC looks to SRIJB scientists and the Public Agency Council group to help with thought leadership"
-Venetia Lannon, DEC
At the quarterly meeting of the Public Agency Council, public agency leaders reiterated the need for science collaboration with SRIJB’s consortium on key projects that are in motion around the Bay.
Bram Gunther, NYC parks department’s chief of forestry, horticulture and natural resources, and Venetia Lannon of DEC offered insights into science opportunities related to resilience and restoration projects at Spring Creek in Howard Beach. Gunther described Spring Creek as an
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important nexus not only between Queens and Brooklyn, but also between multiple political structures—the City and the National Park Service, and among Federal, City and State work. Not only is it an important area from a land use perspective, but it also serves as a meeting point for people from the diverse surrounding communities. The area has significant on-going flooding issues, and wetlands restoration will play an important role in flood mitigation. Gunther encouraged SRI researchers to get involved in working at Spring Creek as this is a useful raw site perfect for posing multi-faceted research questions (social, biological, hydrology etc.). Lannon spoke about DEC’s complementary work in Spring Creek South, emphasizing that the DEC is approaching the design as a "living laboratory," looking at maritime forest resilience. DEC "looks to SRIJB scientists and the Public Agency Council to help with thought leadership as they tackle cutting edge questions and approaches that are widely applicable in NYC and beyond."
Jen Nersesian, superintendent of Gateway National Recreation Area, further reinforced the need for science coordination in a presentation on NPS projects planned for Fort Tilden. NPS is looking to the SRIJB consortium and Public Agency Council for expertise as they consider a range of alternatives for redesigning Shore Road, which was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy. The purpose of consultation is to help select alternatives that best balance needs to improve natural, recreational, and physical resilience while also situating the design process holistically within other projects underway in the area.
SRIJB staff and scientists have already been involved in initial planning workships and intend to remain engaged as the process moves forward.
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Prospects for Resilience Expected to Publish in Fall 2016
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SRIJB will publish a new book with Island Press, entitled Prospects for Resilience. The book is the culmination of collaborative efforts by SRIJB research institutions to assess resilience practices in Jamaica Bay (formerly the Resilience Practice Assessment Report).
William Solecki, Professor of Geography at Hunter College, joins Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society, John Waldman of CUNY-Queens College, and Adam Parris of SRIJB as Executive Editors of the book. “We see this book as an annotated tour guide to resilience practice for the scholar, practitioner, and student alike,” said Solecki. “We use Jamaica Bay as a lens to examine the science of resilience and draw out lessons for those interested in creating resilient forms of urban nature in complex, multi-jurisdictional situations.”
Each chapter provides an in-depth, critical examination of fundamental issues for SRIJB
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and for resilience work in urban coastal areas. Chapters include describing historical,current, and future change, establishing indicators and monitoring systems, modeling frameworks, infrastructure resilience, community resilience and extension, and decision support tools.
“This book has the potential to transform future work and thinking about what makes our coastal communities—natural and human— resilient,” said Courtney Lix of Island Press, “Readers will find it to be a valuable tool for guiding research and decision-making, and also an engaging and inspiring read.”
The book builds on work funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service. It is under contract and expected to publish in Fall 2016.
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New Observation Equipment is Helping Researchers Monitor the Pulse of the Bay
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Site for a new meteorological tower
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Despite severe amounts of ice in Jamaica Bay that caused delays over the winter, a research team affiliated with the Institute has successfully deployed an array of new observational instrumentation near Canarsie Pier and Rockaway Inlet.
"The instrumentation collects data that will be available for all Institute researchers," said John Marra, the Principal Investigator for a multi-institutional team including Co-Principal Investigators Robert Chant (Rutgers), Arnold Gordon (Columbia), and Christopher Zappa (Columbia). "We are collecting data on the currents in Jamaica Bay, and changes in temperatures, salinity, and oxygen levels. At the Rockaway Inlet site the moored sensors will also record changes in nitrate concentrations in the water.” A new meteorological mast also is set to be deployed at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.
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These new observations will help researchers better understand the pulse of the Bay and predict future conditions. The project is a first step towards a permanent Jamaica Bay Observation System and thereby creates opportunities for the Institute to communicate to the public about conditions at hourly to seasonal time scales.
The project is part of a multidimensional science initiative aiming to improve ecosystem resilience around the Bay. With funding from the National Park Service, SRIJB consortium members launched a diverse suite of projects in 2014 that are helping to improve the links between knowledge production and ecosystem management. The projects will continue through late 2016. Read more about the initiative and explore details on each project.
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Recent Findings Suggest the Need for More Community-based Science and Engagement in Jamaica Bay
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With millions of people living in the watershed, coastal Jamaica Bay is a diverse and complex region. Communities differ widely in demographics, economics, and in their relationship to the Bay’s waters and ecosystems. It is no surprise then that community leaders and residents around the Bay also differ in how they perceive their particular community’s capacity to bounce back and thrive in the face of disturbances such as Hurricane Sandy.
A research project affiliated with SRIJB and made possible by support from the Rockefeller Foundation has been trying to get a better understanding of some of these differences and make recommendations on how the Institute can design a program of community-based research and extension to meet the varied needs of Jamaica Bay’s coastal communities. Led by William Solecki (CUNY-Hunter College) and including Team Leads Shorna Allred (Cornell University),
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Laxmi Ramasubramanian (CUNY-Hunter College), and John Waldman (CUNY-Queens College), the research is making headway toward better understanding opportunities to strengthen the underlying social and physical aspects of place—whether infrastructure, economic development, education, or social networks and communication—that communities identify as key to resilience.
The implications of preliminary findings from the research are clear to Solecki, who notes, "these projects all point toward the need to expand opportunities for science-driven learning and engagement around the Bay." Toward this end, SRIJB staff is working with the research teams to design an extension outreach program that builds from this work. Full findings from this research are in preparation for publication. Stay in touch with SRIJB to hear more about these projects, their findings, and the new extension program.
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Strengthening Coastal Research Capacity with an SRIJB Research Boat
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SRIJB is advancing the design of cutting-edge facilities for the Institute, including a research boat and a building that will permanently house the Institute on Jamaica Bay. Both of these projects are made possible by state grants through the CUNY 2020 program.
Brooklyn College and SRIJB staff are working with Direcktor Shipyards to finalize specifications on a new green-powered, multi-use research boat.
Modeled on a vessel used by Norwalk Aquarium, the boat can be modularized to create classroom space in addition to offering ample space for labs and equipment. It also features a leading-edge lithium battery system for propulsion. The specifications for field research include equipment to allow larval surveys, sediment collection, multi-beam equipment for bathymetry, acoustic Doppler current profiler for advanced water column and bay bottom measurements.
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The boat will be operational year-round and will be able to carry up to 49 people.
The boat is modeled on one recently built for Norwalk Aquarium
With CUNY 2020 funds, CUNY also is redesigning aquatic research labs at Brooklyn College and contracting with engineering firms for work on an SRIJB building on Jamaica Bay at Floyd Bennett Field. In addition to housing the office, the Floyd Bennett building may include dorm space, workshop space for trainings, and conference space, among other uses. CUNY will be working with the SRIJB consortium universities to define the final program.
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SRIJB Job Opportunity: Coastal Extension Specialist
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NY Sea Grant, Cornell, and CUNY are collaborating on a 3-year coastal extension specialist to be hired through Sea Grant. Sea Grant has been establishing these positions nationwide over the last 10 years, providing a national network. A description of the job is available at http://www.srijb.org/2015/08/26/coastal-resilience-specialist/. |
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