Background

As coastal hazards increase in intensity and frequency, the need for coastal resilience – the ability to withstand or adjust to stressors – is increasing faster than ever. Fostering coastal resilience must incorporate strategies to support ecological, social and personal resilience. 

Ecological resilience can be supported by maximizing services such as flood control, while social resilience will include diverse community sectors working together to equitably distribute hazard burdens and benefits. To support personal resilience, individuals must feel connected to others in their community, fostering a sense of relatedness, hope and agency. 

Environmental literacy aligns well with these aims, as it includes an understanding of socioecological systems, skills for engaging in environmental solutions, and dispositions necessary for motivating action, at both individual and community scales. Community-based restoration is an ideal context for embedding environmental literacy in efforts that will improve ecological resilience, bring communities together and provide individual agency to strengthen personal resilience.

Project Description

This project team will facilitate interaction across social, ecological and educational disciplines and create a template for community-based restoration projects in increasing coastal resiliency and restoring biodiversity.

The three main goals are to synthesize the factors of coastal resilience and create a multidisciplinary understanding of the concept; create a template for community-based restoration and environmental literacy projects in North Carolina; and connect the Community Science Initiative at the Duke Marine Lab with the expertise within the Nicholas School of the Environment and DukeRestore.

The project team will conduct collaborative research across disciplines to create a publication-ready conceptual paper on the topic. Team members will focus on creating a common language around the multidimensional aspects of coastal resilience to ensure a subject matter fluency across disciplines. 

The team will also collaborate with community partners to develop a restoration and environmental literacy template. Team members will reach out to interested restoration and education community collaborators in eastern North Carolina to form a restoration and environmental literacy working group, and organize a three-day workshop retreat to bring together academics and community partners with multidisciplinary expertise and interest in restoration and resilience.

Anticipated Outputs

Literature review and conceptual paper for publication; template for community-based restoration and resilience projects; workshop for collaborators

Timing

Summer 2022 – Spring 2023

• Summer 2022 (optional): Selected graduate student will conduct initial literature review; develop syllabus for seminar; create online data/communication system
• Fall 2022: Read and synthesize articles from literature review; develop outline of conceptual paper
• Spring 2023: Organize three-day workshop with community partners; write conceptual paper for publication; create a template for community-based restoration and resilience projects

This Team in the News

Meet the Members of the 2022-2023 Student Advisory Council

Image: Sunrise at the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC, by Jared Lazarus