UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The flooding caused by Hurricane Ida across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions provides a glimpse at the disasters threatening coastal communities as the climate warms. These disasters often disproportionately affect communities of color and other historically underserved neighborhoods. A $19.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Coastlines and People Program (CoPe) will help to bring researchers and stakeholders together to equitably support coastal communities to better manage coastal climate risks.
The 5-year grant will support the CoPe Megapolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH), a multi-institution research hub. MACH will bring together researchers from many academic disciplines such as natural scientists, social scientists, civil engineers and humanists with stakeholders and decision-makers in the New York City-New Jersey-Philadelphia region to improve climate risk management decisions. The researchers will work with a diverse stakeholder advisory panel to ensure continuous engagement with the communities directly impacted by climate risks and the decisions made to mitigate those risks.
“Helping coastal communities to better manage risks in a changing climate poses nontrivial challenges,” said Klaus Keller, professor of geosciences, director of the Penn State Center for Climate Risk Management and co-principal investigator of MACH. “We not only have to do the research right, we also have to identify and do the right research.”
The researchers will focus on building a knowledge base to inform decisions as communities adapt to a changing climate in ways that benefit all neighborhoods instead of prioritizing certain parts of the metropolitan area over others. They will also work with faculty and students from community colleges to encourage broader participation in the STEM workforce.
“Dr. Keller's research and the CoPe Megapolitan Coastal Transformation Hub demonstrate Penn State's commitment to finding equitable solutions to climate change that serve all communities, especially the historically underserved communities most susceptible to the effects of climate change,” said Penn State President Eric Barron. “I'm proud to see Penn State’s researchers and scientists at the forefront of this critically important field. Congratulations to the team as they begin their collaboration.”
The CoPe Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub is one of five hubs across the United States that the new CoPe awards are funding. William E. Easterling, professor of geography and former dean of Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, helped to initiate the CoPe program during the four years he served as head of the Directorate for Geosciences at NSF.
“I’m excited to see Klaus be a part of the first cohort of CoPe award recipients and participate in a program that the former dean of our college, William Easterling, was instrumental in initiating during his tenure at the NSF,” said Lee Kump, professor of geosciences and John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. “Nearly 40% of the U.S. population lives near a coast and coastal areas are under threat from many stressors, like the recent coastal flooding from Hurricane Ida. The NSF’s Coastlines and People Program will be important in researching solutions for this problem.”
The CoPe Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub will be headquartered on the campus of Rutgers University with Robert Kopp, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, as principal investigator. Other co-principal investigators include Ning Lin, Princeton University; Victoria Ramenzoni, Rutgers University; and Carolyn Kousky, University of Pennsylvania.