Title
Ecosystem service valuation of flood-risk mitigation strategies for Jamaica Bay, New York City
Author(s)
Orton, P. M.;Bond, C.;Fisher, K.;Sanderson, E. W.;Zhang, F.
Published
2018
Abstract
Jamaica Bay is a densely-inhabited watershed on the southeast side of New York City and home to JFK Airport, important sewage treatment and transportation infrastructure, and several former landfills. Homes, businesses and infrastructure in this part of the city are highly vulnerable to coastal flooding and several risk mitigation strategies have been proposed. Here, we quantify a subset of ecosystem service values using value-transfer techniques and storm modeling in combination with HAZUS flood damage modeling to quantify and compare primary benefits and co-benefits of these strategies. The adaptation strategies we evaluate include a planned storm surge barrier and seawall system proposed by the Corps of Engineers, buyouts for neighborhoods that are at risk of repetitive flooding, and varying combinations of nature-based approaches that mimic the pre-development landscape, including wetlands restoration, inlet narrowing, and bay shallowing using sand. Multiple ecosystem service valuation techniques are used to explore sensitivity of the results to specific valuation methods, including transfer of values for specific services such as storm damage reduction benefits, and greenhouse gas regulation-based and biome-based average values. This valuation exercise was facilitated through the use of VisionMakerNYC (https://visionmaker.nyc), an ecological democracy tool that calculates 79 metrics related to water flows, carbon flows, biodiversity, human population, and economics for a user's vision of sustainability. Prior studies have typically found that 70-80% of ecosystem service valuation for coastal communities comes from flood protection, and we will compare this to our results for this particularly urbanized floodplain.
Keywords
Coastal processes;Estuarine processes;Ocean observing systems;OCEANOGRAPHY
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PUB24418