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In: coastal erosion, Lydia Salus, resilience, resiliency, State Cartographer's Office, Wisconsin Coastal Management Program

Lydia Salus grew up about 20 miles from Lake Michigan, in a Wisconsin village graced with Mammoth Spring, where water seeps through cracks on top of the shallow aquifer that underlies much of Waukesha County.

Since her formative years, water has been a part of Salus’s life. As an undergraduate, Salus worked on a project to facilitate fish passage through urban culverts. She got a master’s degree in water resources management with a focus on hydrology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the intention of becoming a hydrologist devoted to ecological restoration.

Although that career in restoration shifted in 2018 when she signed on as an assistant to the Southeastern Wisconsin Coastal Resilience Project, Salus remains tied to water. Right now, her connection is through a brand-new initiative to increase coastal resilience on Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline.

The new project builds on the previous one, which assisted people in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee and Ozaukee counties in responding to rising lake levels—offering information on how to stabilize bluffs, address erosion and protect infrastructure.

Aerial photo of water and buildings near the water. One house is balanced on the edge of a tall bluff over the water.

A southeastern Wisconsin house teeters on the edge of a bluff after coastal storms and waves eroded the shoreline 40 feet in four years. This house was later demolished

It was also notable for encouraging conversation and cooperation among the whole mix of lakefront property owners—between private property holders and municipalities, counties, state agencies and federal partners.

Termed Collaborative Action for Lake Michigan (CALM) Coastal Resilience, the project places Salus at Sea Grant. The Wisconsin Coastal Management Program and State Cartographer’s Office are the other members of this three-way partnership that, according to Salus, increases capacity to reach and serve communities. 

“The Southeastern Wisconsin Resiliency project was a really good start for taking a regional approach to addressing hazards. Hazards don’t just go away,” she said. “That earlier project was good at building momentum in those communities, so then we just wanted to expand that up the coast to other communities and share that momentum with them.”

CALM is funded by what Salus termed “an exciting grant; a competitive grant for something called a project of special merit” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and which was awarded to the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program. It will strive for three outcomes:

  • Increasing collaboration across all stakeholders.
  • Developing, revising or adopting local ordinances, plans or policies that are going to help build resilience in coastal communities.
  • Fostering regional prioritization of hazards that need to be addressed so that when opportunities for collaborative action are available, community leaders are ready to capitalize.

CALM is a nearly $250,000 18-month undertaking that kicked off in October 2021 and will conclude in March 2023, making it, as Salus said, “A quick turnaround, but we already have a good framework to build off of. I think it’s a little bit easier to implement because we have something that we know worked (with the Southeastern Wisconsin Coastal Resiliency Project).”

When fully in the swing of the initiative, Salus will organize field trips, pandemic willing, to highlight coastal challenges and solutions. Additionally, she will host meetings to share case studies and tools, and support communities talking with each other and determining regional priorities. Those communities include 11 counties, 18 cities, 16 villages and 36 towns stretching from the state’s border with Illinois up the Lake Michigan coastline to the state of Michigan.

map of Wisconsin with communities along Lake Michigan highlighted in greens and blues to show areas involved in new resilience program.

Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan communities will participate in a new program to build resilience in the face of flooding, erosion and infrastructure damage.

The types of folks involved are those housed in state and federal agencies, local and state elected officials, coastal engineers and landscape professionals, municipal technical staff members, people from academic institutions, sewerage districts and regional planning commissions.

Salus said she is feeling energized by the chance to bring together so many people through a process that embraces “stakeholder-driven prioritization. I really like that term because we have built into the project the process of getting feedback from the communities. We are starting off with a survey of their needs, so we are then presenting tools and resources and bringing in speakers that are going to be helpful to them.”

Salus is also feeling personally energized as this new initiative gets underway, saying she appreciates the “unique challenge that balances the human-environment interaction. There are naturally occurring processes on the lake that wouldn’t necessarily cause issues if we didn’t have a built environment along the lake, if we didn’t have people living there.” She said she looks forward to the applied science that can address these coastal hazards that are certainly not going to disappear.

 

The post CALM aims to bring calm to communities facing coastal hazards first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Original Article

News Releases | Wisconsin Sea Grant

News Releases | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/news/calm-aims-to-bring-calm-to-communities-facing-coastal-hazards/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=calm-aims-to-bring-calm-to-communities-facing-coastal-hazards

Moira Harrington

On:
In: Elise Ertl, J. Philip Keillor coastal management fellow, Lydia Salus

By Elise Ertl, University of Wisconsin-Superior

Tackling the challenge of developing resilience in coastal communities across the Great Lakes region is a two-way process that combines both science and policy.

Through the J. Philip Keillor Wisconsin Coastal Management Sea Grant Fellowship, the recipient, Lydia Salus, plans to do just that by building on what past fellows have accomplished, which includes writing and editing a coastal processes manual and outreach to local stakeholders.

Lydia Salus. Submitted photo.

“I am looking for some real-world policy experience to see water management on a broader scale,” Salus said. “There are a lot of different facets and opportunities for water management in Wisconsin, especially being placed between two Great Lakes.”

The fellowship is a full-time, yearlong position that will allow Salus to help communities build coastal resilience and make informed decisions. It places a recent master’s or doctoral graduate alongside mentors who will assist in developing water resource management and technical skills regarding water issues. In this case, Salus will be working closely not only with Sea Grant mentors but also with staff at the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program.

When asked what drew her to this fellowship Salus said, “This fellowship is a lot about actionable science, which is very attractive to me. It is going to allow me to take those technical skills and actually be able to do something with them and give that information to communities who will be able to solve problems and make themselves more resilient to coastal processes.”

During the fellowship, Salus hopes to develop her career and focus her career goals. Previously, she worked as a restoration field technician in southeastern Wisconsin to restore areas anywhere from prairie fields to coasts. Since then, her career goals have been focused on water resource management.

“Often, there is a gap between science and decision making and with this position, one of my goals is to be the bridge for that gap and connect science and decision making, especially in the Great Lakes communities,” Salus said.

During her graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Salus was also presented the opportunity to work with Sea Grant as a project assistant on the Southeastern Wisconsin Coastal Resilience Project. Before that, Salus worked to gain an extensive water resource and environmental science background but said having that direct experience with coastal management with Sea Grant drove her to a new section of water resource management, science and policy, and has launched her into this fellowship.

After completion of the fellowship, Salus wants her “future work to be less about the actual position I have and more about the work that I’ll be doing. I want to be able to connect scientific knowledge to fit the needs of different communities and to help them use that knowledge to make informed decisions about the area they live in.”

 

Original Article

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/news/new-keillor-coastal-management-fellow-hopes-to-bridge-the-gap-between-science-and-policy/

Wisconsin Sea Grant

On:
In: Elise Ertl, J. Philip Keillor coastal management fellow, Lydia Salus

By Elise Ertl, University of Wisconsin-Superior

Tackling the challenge of developing resilience in coastal communities across the Great Lakes region is a two-way process that combines both science and policy.

Through the J. Philip Keillor Wisconsin Coastal Management Sea Grant Fellowship, the recipient, Lydia Salus, plans to do just that by building on what past fellows have accomplished, which includes writing and editing a coastal processes manual and outreach to local stakeholders.

Lydia Salus. Submitted photo.

“I am looking for some real-world policy experience to see water management on a broader scale,” Salus said. “There are a lot of different facets and opportunities for water management in Wisconsin, especially being placed between two Great Lakes.”

The fellowship is a full-time, yearlong position that will allow Salus to help communities build coastal resilience and make informed decisions. It places a recent master’s or doctoral graduate alongside mentors who will assist in developing water resource management and technical skills regarding water issues. In this case, Salus will be working closely not only with Sea Grant mentors but also with staff at the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program.

When asked what drew her to this fellowship Salus said, “This fellowship is a lot about actionable science, which is very attractive to me. It is going to allow me to take those technical skills and actually be able to do something with them and give that information to communities who will be able to solve problems and make themselves more resilient to coastal processes.”

During the fellowship, Salus hopes to develop her career and focus her career goals. Previously, she worked as a restoration field technician in southeastern Wisconsin to restore areas anywhere from prairie fields to coasts. Since then, her career goals have been focused on water resource management.

“Often, there is a gap between science and decision making and with this position, one of my goals is to be the bridge for that gap and connect science and decision making, especially in the Great Lakes communities,” Salus said.

During her graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Salus was also presented the opportunity to work with Sea Grant as a project assistant on the Southeastern Wisconsin Coastal Resilience Project. Before that, Salus worked to gain an extensive water resource and environmental science background but said having that direct experience with coastal management with Sea Grant drove her to a new section of water resource management, science and policy, and has launched her into this fellowship.

After completion of the fellowship, Salus wants her “future work to be less about the actual position I have and more about the work that I’ll be doing. I want to be able to connect scientific knowledge to fit the needs of different communities and to help them use that knowledge to make informed decisions about the area they live in.”

 

Original Article

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/news/new-keillor-coastal-management-fellow-hopes-to-bridge-the-gap-between-science-and-policy/

Wisconsin Sea Grant