Poster Session: Building Resilience to Challenges and Disruptions

Climate change is increasing the magnitude and frequency of environmental disasters, and the challenges to protect coastlines are becoming more and more relevant. Therefore, Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBFs) are increasingly explored (against built infrastructures) to provide adequate protection to cope with climate change. Seagrass meadows have the capacity to modify currents and wave energies, which trap sediments into meadows and reduce shoreline erosion rates. By capturing and stabilizing sediments within the beach foreshore, seagrass meadows create biogeomorphic landscapes. This project aims to evaluate the role of seagrass canopies and the biogeomorphic landscapes they create in the U.S. Virgin Islands, particularly focusing on areas exposed to predominant wave action in open waters. This study also seeks to determine whether changes in seagrass patches affect beach recovery and the delivery of seagrass meadow services in the U.S. Virgin Islands and along the coastlines of Alabama, particularly in tidal lagoon environments. To understand the hydrodynamic processes, SediMeters will be installed seaward, shoreward, and within the seagrass beds to measure sediment erosion during calm and stormy conditions. Pressure sensors will be used for wave energies. A wave buoy will be used where sensors cannot be deployed seaward. Finally, the bathymetry from the beach shoreward of the beds will be monitored to look at the evolution of the shoreline. Data will be collected during calm conditions and hurricane seasons to better understand the impact of seagrass meadows on coastal resilience. Data will be processed at the University of South Alabama to understand better how seagrass meadows influence beach stability and to investigate the relative effectiveness of different restoration strategies (length, width, and density of patches).

The offshore wind energy industry experienced a 15% growth from 2022 to 2023. Stationary wind turbines generate various types of sound including broadband, infrasonic, and impulsive that impact local wildlife. Noise disruptions to migratory routes and animal behavior are not fully understood. Rotors create vibrations as they complete revolutions and are estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year. Inflatable turbine technologies have enabled alternative ways of harnessing wind energy without impacting wildlife. The Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS) was a horizonal inflatable tethered based turbine that harnessed the Magnus effect. Limits of MARS included that it couldn't be brought to scale in producing functional energy capacities.
A test was constructed to explore a multi-tiered concept for inflatable turbines. Two inflatable rotors were attached to a tether in a multi-tiered configuration. Tier 1 was positioned 3 feet from the tether's base, and Tier 2 was positioned 6 feet from the base. Capsules were attached to the inflatables to create rotor devices and capsules on each tier were placed in opposing directions. The tethered inflatable rotors were then exposed to winds of 1.5 mph and results were recorded with a Samsung A01 13MP video camera.
The inflatable turbines rotated in designed direction relative to their capsule position without incurring any bird mortality. However, wind pressure exerted directly onto the inflatables exceeded capsule capacity to effectively rotate and maintain an upright vertical axis. Vertical turbine configuration appeared to redirect Magnus effect laterally instead of keeping the turbines airborne.
Further research is needed to explore Magnus effect and how to bring inflatable turbine designs to scale for energy harvesting. As coastal wind farms increase in popularity, impacts to marine wildlife will also expand. Inflatable turbines decrease wildlife mortality and can be placed in storage for weather events such as hurricanes.

People that work in the seafood, fisheries and aquaculture industry overcome many obstacles that are outside of their control while completing a dangerous job. They tend to be extremely resilient. The regulatory, environmental, economic and health stresses are exceptionally higher for people that work in the seafood industry than many other sectors. In fact, the Center for Disease Control found that people classified as "fishing and hunting workers" have suicide rates four time higher than the average person in the US. In recent years, stress in the seafood sector seems even greater for people working in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Fishing organizations in other parts of the country have begun addressing this topic, and there is an opportunity for more work in the Gulf. This presentation will highlight an initial effort that brings together seafood industry leaders and mental health professionals to develop an outreach product to help members of fishing communities access mental health support. In addition, the presentation will summarize work being conducted in other parts of the US and next steps for the effort that is focused on coastal Mississippi and Alabama.

There are over 60,000 miles of US highways, and thousands of bridges, that are vulnerable to extreme coastal storm hazards today. Those numbers are expected to increase with the impacts of future climate change. Increasing sea levels will exacerbate the extent and magnitude of coastal flooding through higher groundwater tables, elevated tides, higher storm surges, and larger waves. This increase in the frequency and severity of coastal flooding may contribute to reduced infrastructure performance, weakened resilience, and a shorter service life. We have already seen examples of degraded roadway performance in many coastal areas of the US. Flexible asphalt pavement roads rely on the strength of their soil foundations. Persistent inundation of soils leads to rutting, alligator cracking, and other surface deterioration in asphalt pavements. However, resilient adaptations that intentionally seek to mitigate the negative effects of sea level rise may lead to better roadway performance in the future. This research examines the potential benefits of nature-based solutions in the context of enhancing the resilience of our coastal highways. We will evaluate the hazard reduction benefits of a suite of resilient adaptations including both conventional engineering solutions and nature-based solutions across study areas in Alabama and New Hampshire. Study areas will be modeled using the two-dimensional, depth-integrated model XBeach, which simulates both hydrodynamics and morphological response over storm timescales. A range of extreme event and sea level rise scenarios will be simulated with XBeach to evaluate potential sensitivities of the resilient adaptations to the magnitude of the hazard. Reductions in inundation frequency, magnitude, and duration will be determined by comparing the impact of the extreme event on the study area with and without implementation of the resilient adaptations into the model formulation.

Mississippi Sound and Bight (MSAB), an integral component of the northern Gulf of Mexico has attracted so many researchers to fully understand the response of this ecosystem to climate change. In recent years, the ecosystem has received abnormal freshwater, nutrient, and sediment discharge from several local rivers as well as the Mississippi River which empties into the system through the Bonnet Carré Spillway (BCS) structure, upstream of New Orleans, when it gets operated. In 2019, the BCS was opened twice due to high MS River levels, underlining the increasing pressure on flood control systems. The two openings resulted in the release of about 38.1 km3 (combined) over the 123 days the structure was operational. The environmental impact of this extensive opening was profound and motivated the application of a coastal circulation model (msbCOAWST) to investigate the changes in the hydrodynamic conditions resulting from this human-operated freshwater diversion. msbCOAWST is a 400 m resolution, 24-terrain following vertical layer circulation model of the MSAB based on a regional application of Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Wave Sediment Transport (COAWST) modeling system established during the GoMRI-funded CONCORDE consortium. For this study, twin experiments were conducted to isolate the effects of BCS opening on the flow exchange between the nearshore estuarine waters of Mississippi Sound and the inner shelf of Mississippi Bight. The results of the simulations, including changes in volume and salt fluxes through the tidal inlets, will be presented. This involves estimating the cumulative flux of the daily materials exchanged through the inlets from the day of the first BCS opening to the last day of the second opening. This provides us with a detailed understanding of how local rivers and BCS waters influence water quality and the exchange processes between the estuary and the shelf.

The escalating impact of climate change and rapid urbanization profoundly affects community resilience, particularly in vulnerable coastal regions. This study advocates for a fresh perspective that integrates quantitative measurement and analysis into the concept of resilience, addressing natural and human-caused disasters affecting coastal areas. Our research investigates the correlation between Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) and socioeconomic indicators, drawing upon data adapted from the US Census Bureau. We focus on various coastal challenges, with particular emphasis on major hurricanes and severe storms.
Parametric analysis of 82 counties reveals a significant positive correlation between risk factors and community resilience estimates. Our statewide analysis, encompassing 15,068 nonprofit organizations, uncovers strong positive correlations across various categories. We explore specific resilience-building strategies crucial for coastal areas, including adaptive land use planning, climate-resilient infrastructure design, and innovative floodplain management techniques.
Our study emphasizes the importance of resilience-focused education and engagement programs, examining their impact on community preparedness and adaptive capacity. The research highlights the crucial role of charitable organizations in pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster rebuilding and offers recommendations to enhance collaboration between nonprofits and government agencies.
This analysis deepens our comprehension of resilience dynamics in coastal areas, providing a robust framework for addressing coastal communities' unique challenges. Our findings lay the groundwork for targeted interventions crucial in shaping disaster recovery regulations and fostering best practices in coastal resilience. The study significantly contributes to public policy by examining the multifaceted aspects of resilience, ultimately aiming to create more resilient and sustainable coastal regions capable of withstanding and recovering from various hazards.

This study provides a comprehensive review of the resilience of concrete pavement along the Gulf Coast, a region facing significant challenges from climate change. Being prone to rising temperatures, heavier rainfall, sea-level rise, and more frequent extreme weather events, this region has performance and sustainability risks of concrete pavement. This review explores the challenges Gulf Coast Pavements face and their impact on their durability and performance. Key areas of investigation include the impacts of extreme heat, which can cause thermal stresses leading to cracking and warping, and the effects of flooding and sea-level rise, which contribute to subgrade saturation and pavement degradation. This review also examines recent emerging techniques in resilience pavement design, such as the adoption of precast concrete, pervious concrete, and self-healing materials, which offer potential solutions for enhancing pavement durability in the face of these challenges from the harsh realities of changing climate. Additionally, the paper discusses various strategies for mitigation which include improved drainage systems, the use of geosynthetics, and the incorporation of climate considerations into pavement design. These approaches aim to extend the service life of pavements, reduce maintenance costs, and enhance overall infrastructure resilience in the Gulf Coast region. The findings underscore the need for innovative, climate-adaptive design practices that prioritize sustainability and resilience. This review serves as a critical resource for engineers, policymakers, and researchers focused on developing durable and sustainable infrastructure in coastal areas that are increasingly impacted by climate change.

Coastal communities in the Gulf Coast region face increasing threats to their transportation infrastructure due to flooding from storm surges, sea level rise, and intense precipitation events. This study provides a comprehensive review of the impacts of flooding on pavement performance and explores strategies for enhancing infrastructure resilience in these vulnerable areas. Drawing on case studies from notable flood events, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the 2011 Brisbane floods, and infrastructure assessments in Florida, we examine flood-induced damage mechanisms affecting pavements, such as cracking, rutting, and subgrade degradation. Our analysis employs various evaluation methods, ranging from field investigations and laboratory experiments to network-level analyses, establishing deterioration curves for different roadway types to calculate a resilience index. Key findings underscore the detrimental effects of inundation on pavement conditions, the critical need for timely rehabilitation decisions, and the importance of quantifying flood vulnerability at a network scale. We identify significant research gaps, including the lack of precise damage quantification functions, the need to differentiate between functional and structural resilience, and the lack of comprehensive methodologies for network-level flood impact assessments. By addressing these gaps, this research aims to contribute to developing flood-resilient pavement designs and effective post-flood management strategies, offering valuable insights for coastal communities seeking to enhance the resilience of their roadway infrastructure in the face of increasing climate threats.

More than 1,000 tornadoes affect communities across the United States each year, impacting an average of 44,000 households and about 111,000 people each year. 
Several factors make the Southeast United States more uniquely vulnerable to tornadoes than the "Tornado Alley" of the Central Plains:
Prevalence of nighttime tornadoes
Large mobile home population by county
High percentage of forest coverage
Significant population of under-resourced communities
Potential for tornadoes year-round
Less than one percent of U.S. tornadoes have been exhaustively studied, so there is still much to learn about how individuals receive, interpret, and respond to severe weather forecasts and warnings. In addition to understanding how people interact with weather information, it's also important to understand how those interactions may differ across different communities. 
Tornado Tales is a post-event web survey developed by researchers at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory and at the University of Oklahoma that captures the personal experiences of residents affected by tornadoes. The survey should take participants no more than 5-10 minutes to complete, and anyone who has experienced a tornado (or a storm that was capable of producing a tornado) may share their story. The results will help researchers understand the nuances of tornado forecast and warning reception, understanding, and response, which could lead to future improvements to the forecast and communication system. 
Pilot data from the first iteration of the survey shows most respondents reported receiving a tornado warning before the event. Furthermore, respondents reported receiving warnings from a variety of sources, including automated phone notifications, social media, television, and outdoor warning sirens. Respondents generally sheltered in the building they were occupying at the time of the warning, and some also continued to monitor the situation. This presentation will highlight these results and more and discuss recent changes to the survey instrument. 
Long-term research goals for the Tornado Tales survey aim to evaluate the evolution of forecast and warning sources and differences in warning reception, understanding, and response across different communities. Understanding how people use tornado forecasts and products during real events is a key step to ensuring high-quality, equitable services. 

Accelerating sea level rise (SLR) has had major impacts on salt marsh habitats globally. These ecosystems play a pivotal role in coastal resilience, so preserving them is increasingly important. Our study site of Grand Bay, Mississippi is located along the Gulf Coast, which is a hotspot for salt marsh degradation. Grand Bay occupies an undeveloped section of the coast and lacks the anthropogenic pressures felt by other salt marshes like those in nearby Mobile, Alabama. However, the salt marshes here still have to contend with high levels of erosion thanks to SLR and the notable absence of freshwater inputs. Although prior research has focused on SLR and its impacts on the marsh vegetation at Grand Bay over shorter time scales, longer-term studies are needed to provide context for these impacts. 
To address this research gap, we examined changes in the salt marsh vegetation at Grand Bay in response to SLR over the last 40 years. We predict that marsh migration to upland areas will be revealed through this analysis. To start, low, mid, and high-marsh zones were established based on elevation and shifts in marsh extent for each zone were quantified. Vegetation density of these zones was examined over time using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Previously collected SLR data was also compared to shifts in vegetation density to determine the degree of impact caused by rising water levels. Preliminary results suggest a change in vegetation density across the study period, but further research is needed to pinpoint when and where changes are occurring. 
This research will demonstrate how the plant communities at Grand Bay have transformed in response to SLR over the last four decades. These results will further inform predictive models as salt marshes continue to contend with the threat of accelerating sea level rise.

Flooding is the most destructive natural hazard in the US. Nature-based solutions (NBS) provide an effective way to mitigate flood risks while maintaining the integrity of ecosystem services and generating co-benefits. However, research on urban NBS projects show that they often cause gentrification and displacement. Vulnerable communities can take advantage of NBS and simultaneously promote social equity through carefully designed multi-scale projects that improve the connections between NBS and community development. This poster will highlight various projects and outreach work done within the city of Moss Point, Mississippi to co-identify feasible NBS at multiple spatial scales (household/site, coastal area). Moss Point, an underrepresented city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, has a history of flooding issues and inadequate drainage, which are concerns that could be rectified through the adoption and use of various NBS features. By adopting NBS practices, the city can be better prepared for potential flood risks and adapt to future climate change stressors such as sea level rise. 
The stakeholders involved in identifying NBS sites within the city have implemented a multi-disciplinary approach that involves mapping, hydrological modeling, competency group engagement, surveys, and outreach activities. We leverage the community's capacity building through ongoing grant initiatives and continued outreach and engagement with the city's elected officials and staff. The poster will highlight findings from various meetings with the city officials and local stakeholders. We believe that this work can be a useful road map on how to help underserved communities build NBS planning capacity which can be widely applied.

Creaserinus gordoni, commonly known as the Camp Shelby Burrowing Crayfish, is known only from a small area in Perry County, MS where it is primarily found in pitcher plant wetlands. According to the Mississippi State Wildlife Action Plan, C. gordoni is considered critically imperiled and a candidate species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Extensive sampling efforts in the area indicate that this species may have a naturally limited range making them highly susceptible to disturbance and habitat loss. While C. gordoni is a burrowing species and, as such, is not reliant upon stream or river dispersal or ensuring gene flow between populations, specimens of C. gordoni have been collected from areas that are part of both the Cypress Creek Watershed (Black Creek drainage) and Beaumont Creek (Leaf River drainage). These river drainages are separated by a drier upland area where evidence of these crayfish is largely absent. Thus, maintenance of gene flow between these drainages is questionable and suggests that specimens attributed to C. gordoni may represent different genetic stocks on either side of this natural break. To examine patterns of gene flow and uncover potential population structure among specimens attributed to C. gordoni, tissue samples from approximately 150 individuals, from throughout its range, were collected and cryogenically frozen in the field. In the lab, total genomic DNA was extracted and ~700 bp of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) was amplified using PCR and sequenced. Preliminary analyses of connectivity patterns will be presented.

The Cooperative Institute for Research on Hydrology (CIROH) project titled "Assessing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to Mitigate Flood Impacts and Enhance Resilience" is an ongoing project conducted in Mobile Bay, Alabama, that explores the potential of NBS to address compound flood risks through a collaborative knowledge co-production process. This project engaged coastal practitioners and scientists through a series of workshops. The first workshop was held on April 17, 2023, followed by a virtual meeting on modeling updates in November 2023, and another in-person workshop on May 23, 2024. Our social science team prepared a structured questionnaire to assess changes in participants' perceptions of compound flooding and NBS. In each workshop, participants completed two survey sessions: one at the beginning and another at the end. Both surveys included the same questions, allowing us to quantify any shifts in perception after the workshop's activities. The goal was to measure the extent of perception changes as a result of the workshop. The data collected through the questionnaire have been processed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the survey data revealed that there is a significant shift in changes in the perceptions of participants about compound flooding and NBS. During the workshops, the project team also learned about existing NBS initiatives through participatory GIS mapping. This led to a discussion that contributed to co-producing knowledge on further interventions needed to improve the management of these NBS projects. Collaboration between coastal practitioners and the scientific team is crucial for managing the severe impacts of flooding, as it combines the distinct expertise of both groups to enhance flood resilience.

The Mississippi River Delta, the terminus of the largest river system in the United States, is experiencing a notable retrogradation. The suspended sediment load of the river has reduced significantly by approximately 50% since the 1950s. While previous research has documented the effects of this reduced sediment load on terrestrial environments, its impact on the entire subaqueous delta front's bathymetry and geomorphological features remains underexplored. Two recent studies have investigated bathymetric change in the subaqueous delta during the last century, but did not include the most recent data, had limited spatial coverage, and were focused mainly offshore of Southwest Pass (SWP), the river's highest discharge outlet. To expand our temporal and spatial analysis, this study compared newly-acquired bathymetric data from the USGS and industry data collected in 1973 to 1997 by Enterprise Products Partners, C&C Technologies, BP, and Fugro. Using these datasets, we created depth difference maps to analyze and calculate bathymetric changes across the Mississippi River Delta Front (MRDF). This research enhances understanding of geomorphological patterns, deepening and shoaling trends, and seafloor movement of the delta front, which have critical implications for river management, offshore infrastructure, and hazards on the MRDF.