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.