Event is FREE, but registration is required as space is limited.

Who Municipal staff, council members, public works staff, emergency management personnel, coastal community members, consultants, engineers, state representatives, and state agencies

There will be time for you to network, ask questions, and exchange ideas on your current community issues and potential mitigation or adaptation project ideas. Attendees can discuss with our experts methods of developing proposals, finding project partners, and building internal capacity in order to get a project off the ground.

Come hear about funding and technical resources available to help your community to take action and more!

For more information, visit our website at: www.derascl.org

Presented by the DNREC Wetland Monitoring and Assessment Program

Start planning your day at the 2020 Delaware Wetlands Conference! The full agenda is now available to view.

There will be presenters from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and more.

Session topics are all related to wetlands and include: Implementation Tools, Coastal Resilience, Soils, Beneficial Use, Monitoring & Assessment, Remediation, Restoration, Wildlife, Policy/Legal, Green Technology, MACSWS: Mitigation, and Hydrodynamics. Whew!

Full Agenda

It is possible to facilitate informative and empowering conversations about climate change!

Weds. Feb. 26 - Thurs. Feb. 27, 2020

St. Jones Reserve, Dover     

At this 1.5 day training, participants will learn about strategic framing – a research based approach to communication that engages audiences in thinking productively about how they can participate in creating or supporting solutions to climate change.

The training introduces the elements of strategic framing, such as tone, values, explanatory metaphors, and solutions; provides an opportunity to practice applying what participants learned; and increases participants’’ confidence in their ability to overcome barriers to interpreting climate change issues. 

TRAINING GOALS

1. Understand how people think about climate change

2. To introduce you to why we need to tell a different story about climate change and give you tools to start telling that story.  

3. Practice using communication tools that lead to productive communication about climate change

The National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI) started with a commitment to using evidence-based communications developed through social science research. Since 2010, NNOCCI worked with social scientists and ocean and climate scientists to train ISEI educators and others. This training will be led by a NNOCCI certified trainer, who will focus on sharing empirically tested techniques such as appealing to common, deeply held values that unite Americans, explaining the mechanisms driving climate change with tested metaphors, and orienting discussion toward examples of people already fostering positive change.

The course is designed for those that may find themselves interacting with members of the public on climate change issues, this includes but is not limited to both informal and formal educators, communications specialists, planners, municipal staff, floodplain managers, hazard mitigation planners, sustainability managers, community groups, members of civic organizations and non-profits, and coastal resource managers.

At the end of the training participants will:

• Learn basic climate science principles 

• Understand why we need to change how we tell the climate story

• Know how to frame a story with tone, values, explanatory metaphors, and solutions

• Feel more confident in their ability to overcome barriers to interpreting climate change issues

Delaware Communities are increasingly threatened by flooding, coastal hazards and changing climate conditions. Explore the work of Delaware Coastal Programs in improving community resiliency across the state through this interactive map.

The DNREC/DNERR Coastal Training Program runs the Resilient Community Partnership, which provides technical assistance and potential funding to plan for and reduce the impacts of coastal hazards and climate change through the development of planning strategies at the local level. 

The Partnership program helps communities work through the stages of assessing their vulnerabilities, prioritizing potential adaptation and planning options, and implementing their plans. The Coastal Training Program (CTP) offers direct staffing, technical support, public outreach, and training to support a community’s efforts to be more resilient to coastal and climate hazards.

The CTP is currently working with a group of seven unique coastal municipalities including Lewes, Henlopen Acres, Rehoboth, Dewey Beach, Bethany, South Bethany, and Fenwick Island on a comprehensive assessment of impervious surface coverage. The project will produce community-specific strategies for reducing flooding due to runoff and for increasing stormwater infiltration and will wrap up at the end of this year.

A call for Letters of Interest for the next Resilient Community Partnership project will be forthcoming in early 2020. Learn more about this program here:  de.gov/resilientcommunity

Grant period now open for projects across Delaware and Maryland service area

A new program funded by Delaware Power and administered by Delaware Nature Society is providing grant money to help support open space and environmental projects, and resiliency projects across Delmarva Power’s Delaware and Maryland service area. The Sustainable Communities Grant Program launched its first application period today and will fund up to $75,000 in projects each year.

 

The Sustainable Communities Grant Program will provide $50,000 in grants of up to $10,000 each to municipalities, recreational authorities and nonprofits for projects focusing on open space preservation, improvements to parks and recreation resources, and environmental conservation. Projects include the development of recreation trails, the purchase of open space, planting of trees and other vegetation. Grants from $1,000 to $10,000 will be provided to support these projects.

The program also will provide one to two grants, totaling $25,000, to support resiliency projects that demonstrate innovation in providing a safe and reliable resource for a community during a time of emergency. The program will support a range of community resiliency efforts that help prepare a community for the impacts of more severe weather. Eligible activities include: community engagement and education regarding resiliency, the purchase of energy storage, and solar installation including mobile solar units.

 

A committee with representatives from Delmarva Power, The Delaware Nature Society, county agencies and conservation organizations will review grant applications and select the projects to receive funding. Grant requests for the 2020 Sustainable Communities Grant Program will be accepted until January 31, 2020. Delmarva Power and The Delaware Nature Society will award these grants in March 2020.

 

Municipalities, recreational authorities and nonprofits can learn more about The Sustainable Communities Grant Program and how to submit a grant request at www.delnature.org/sustainablecommunitiesgrant .

The   National Estuary Program (NEP) Coastal Watersheds Grant Program is a newly established nationally competitive grants program designed to support projects that address urgent and challenging issues threatening the well-being of coastal and estuarine areas within determined estuaries of national significance.

This grant program supports the following priorities:

 

·      Loss of key habitats

·      Recurring harmful algae blooms

·      Unusual or unexplained marine mammal mortalities

·      Proliferation or invasion of species

·      Flooding and coastal erosion

·      Impacts of nutrients and warmer water temperatures on aquatic life

·      Contaminants of emerging concern found in coastal and estuarine waters

 

More information will be coming soon regarding a call for proposals. Check out the website for more information, including a more detailed list of the grant's priorities.

Note that all projects must occur completely within one of the 28 NEP coastal watershed geographic areas . For more information, please contact  Suzanne Simon, Program Director.

As a part of our mission, the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve is committed to promoting informed decision making through the Delaware Coastal Training Program. This program addresses critical coastal resource management issues in Delaware by providing current scientific information, access to technologies and skill-building opportunities to Delawareans responsible for making decisions about the state's coastal resources. 

Requests for submittal: Have a great resource, training, or program that you want to share with Delaware community leaders and natural resources managers to help make our communities safer and more sustainable? Please submit information for inclusion in this e-newsletter to the contact below.