RESCHEDULED: Economic Value of Coastal Ecosystems to Adjacent Communities - JC NERR as a Case Study 

The JC NERR was the case study for the recently completed study looking at the economic value of coastal ecosystems to adjacent coastal communities.  

 The study team will be at the JC NERR presenting the results of their study. After the presentation gusest will have a chace to interact with the NOAA project team. 

This study used the “damages avoided” method, in which the ameliorating benefits of a natural habitat are measured by using either the value of property protected or the cost of actions taken to avoid damages as a measure of the benefits provided by an ecosystem.

Two sceanrios were modeled:

1. Selected storms were modeled in an environment in which current marsh cover was present in the model; and, 
2. The wetlands were removed and replaced by open water to evaluate the change in flooding and respective flood damages.

In order to understand how the protection value of the marsh within the JC NERR may change over time, the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) was utilized to create a GIS environment that projects  how shoreline habitats will be altered in the face of sea level rise (SLR) in the area of interest by the year 2050.  The three storm events were again modeled in this projected 2050 environment in both a “marsh present” and “marsh absent” scenario.

For this study’s area of interest, it was found that the marsh in the JC NERR is worth:

• ~$8.34 million in avoided damages during a simulated Hurricane Sandy storm event
• ~$13.08 million in avoided damages during a simulated 50-year storm event
• ~$9.83 in avoided damages in a simulated 25-year storm event to residential property owners. 

When the three storm events were modeled under future projected marsh cover and sea levels for the year 2050, it was found that the marsh would be worth:

• ~$32.09 million in avoided damages during a simulated Hurricane Sandy storm event
• ~$19.93 million in avoided damages during a simulated 50-year storm event, and 
• ~$1.54 million in avoided damages during a simulated 25-year storm event to residential property owners

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