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IL Coastal Management Program |
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Monthly Newsletter - December 2022 |
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In this issue: Featured News, Emerging Research, Emerging Resources, Share Your Voice, Funding Opportunities, and Great Lakes News.
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Happy Holidays from the Illinois Coastal Program!
Dear coastal partners and friends,
2022 was a year marked by momentum in the realm of coastal management. Here at the Coastal Program our mission is to protect, restore, and enhance the Illinois coastal region and all of its diverse ecosystems and communities. This year we saw some exciting new initiatives taking form that will help us carry out this mission in years to come. We kicked off a national Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Study led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the federal government passed both the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, bringing in millions of $ to the Great Lakes for coastal resiliency; we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Zone Management Act and the 10th anniversary of the Illinois Coastal Program!
And we certainly made good use of this momentum here at Illinois CMP. To highlight a few of our accomplishments for 2022:
- We worked to promote and monitor performance of the innovative Rubble Ridge pilot project at Illinois Beach State Park installed last year, in partnership with Healthy Port Futures, the Illinois Natural History Survey, and the Illinois State Geological Survey.
- Our Coastal Clean Waters plan received full approval by NOAA and the EPA after 8 years of hard work!
- We convened stakeholders working on local coastal resiliency issues through our Shoreline Management Working Group and our Illinois Beach Managers Forum.
- We participated in external working groups and provided direction as steering committee members for initiatives such as the Calumet Stormwater Collaborative and the Great Lakes Sediment Workshop.
- We traveled to Erie, Pennsylvania to meet with our sister coastal programs in the other 7 Great Lakes states.
- We passed through over $800,000 of federal funding to local organizations through our Competitive Grants program and additional programmatic grants.
- We assessed how our program could improve its work surrounding equity & environmental justice, and began taking action starting with revising our competitive grants application to better reflect these priorities.
And, perhaps most excitingly, we were able to finally meet with each other in person to drive these initiatives forward. Partnership is an integral pillar of the Illinois CMP, and we've been grateful this year to reconnect with our wide array of partners up and down the coast. Without you all we wouldn't be able to do any of this important work. Through collaboration, mutual advocacy, and friendship, together we are able to create transformative change for the region.
In a time of widespread division, our unique network remains a refreshing example of the power of sharing knowledge, resources, and, most importantly, a vision. A vision of a healthy, thriving landscape that supports native plant and animal species, that revitalizes our economies, that rights historical wrongs, and that provides opportunity for all to connect with the very things that make us feel alive: the sounds of birds passing through the trees, the life and healing that water brings as it flows through the natural and human environment, our connection to each other and to this earth.
With more to come in 2023, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday season and a resounding thank you for all the hard work and collaboration this year!
The Illinois Coastal team
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Chicago’s Hegewisch Marsh receives funding award from the National Coastal Resilience Fund!
The Chicago Park District was recently awarded $500,000 through the National Coastal Resilience Fund to improve 60 acres of hemi-marsh and upland habitats at Hegewisch Marsh. This habitat will support key species of migratory waterfowl and other species.
This project was among 96 chosen across the country to as part of a national effort to restore or expand natural features such as coastal marshes and wetlands, dune and beach systems, oyster and coral reefs, coastal forests and rivers, floodplains, and barrier islands that minimize the impacts of storms, sea-level rise and other coastal hazards on nearby communities.
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Climate Change Yields Uncertain Future for Great Lakes Water Levels
"Scientists say communities around the Great Lakes should prepare for swings in high and low water levels to boost their resilience in the face of climate change.
A multi-agency panel of scientists discussed the uncertainty surrounding the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes Monday during the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in Chicago. Water fluctuations on the Great Lakes are primarily driven by precipitation, evaporation and runoff from rivers and streams that drain into the Great Lakes Basin.
Scientists say it’s uncertain how climate change will affect each of those factors, including Lauren Fry, a research physical scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory."
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Positioning the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Region as a Leader in the Voluntary Carbon Offset Market
The Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers (GSGP) recently released a report commissioned from the Global CO2 Initiative at the University of Michigan to assess the potential for nature-based and engineered carbon solutions in our region.
The report finds 52 gigatons of environmentally sound, high-quality carbon storage is possible regionwide by 2050. This storage capacity could generate US$783 billion for the region through global carbon markets.
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Satellite launched to map the world’s oceans, lakes, rivers
"A U.S.-French satellite that will map almost all of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers rocketed into orbit Friday.
The predawn launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California capped a highly successful year for NASA.
Nicknamed SWOT — short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography — the satellite is needed more than ever as climate change worsens droughts, flooding and coastal erosion, according to scientists. Cheers erupted at control centers in California and France as the spacecraft started its mission.
“It is a pivotal moment, and I’m very excited about it,” said NASA program scientist Nadya Vinogradova-Shiffer. “We’re going to see Earth’s water like we’ve never before.” "
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Great Lakes of Opportunity Playbook
In partnership with the Conservation Finance Network, the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers (GSGP) developed a "Great Lakes of Opportunity" playbook to help spur conservation finance and investment deals across the region.
This collaboration focused on identifying gaps and barriers along with needed actions to drive greater investment in our region. This playbook is therefore both an analysis of our region’s state of play and a call to action. Its insights and recommendations aim to help government, philanthropy, nonprofits, investors, project developers and individuals grow investment opportunities in our region’s natural systems.
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Art Competition |
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Art x Climate: A Project of the Fifth National Climate Assessment |
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The U.S. Global Change Research Program, in collaboration with Smithsonian Institution, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, invites artists to engage in the development of the Fifth National Climate Assessment by creatively visualizing climate change in the United States: its causes, impacts, and manifestations; our shared vulnerabilities; and the strength of our collective response.
Art x Climate seeks to strengthen partnerships between science and art and demonstrate the power of art to advance the national conversation around climate change. Selected art submissions will be featured in the Fifth National Climate Assessment as chapter covers and within the chapters. Selected artworks may also be used in case studies, in public events, or in communication materials.
There are two calls, one for artists ages 13–17, and one for artists 18 and up (more details below). Artists who wish to submit their works must do so via the appropriate CaFÉ portal by 11:59 p.m. ET on January 27, 2023.
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Webinar |
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Federal Cost-Benefit Analysis Policies for Evaluating Nature-Based Solutions |
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US federal agencies use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to make decisions about the types of infrastructure projects to implement. Current federal CBA policies tend to favor gray infrastructure projects over Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Join the third session of the Nature-Based Solutions: Current Issues webinar series to hear from experts working with the federal government to think about how these policies might be updated to enable more NbS projects to get implemented.
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January 12 | 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
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Conference |
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Wild Things 2023 |
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The Wild Things 2023 Conference invites nature enthusiasts from across Illinois and beyond to learn about the flora, fauna, and natural history of the Prairie State! Join a community of 3,000 volunteers, conservationists, and natural resource professionals at the 2023 Conference to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Illinois Nature Preserves. View the lineup here.
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February 25 | 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
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Technical Assistance Program to Help Great Lakes Coastal Communities
Deadline: Extended to December 2022!
The Association of State Floodplain Managers and its partners – the American Planning Association, Coastal States Organization, and Great Lakes Sea Grant Network via Wisconsin Sea Grant – have designed the Strengthening Coastal Counties Resilience Challenge to help communities develop policies and plans to improve their community’s resilience to coastal flooding, while building their knowledge and understanding of the tools available to assist them.
The Challenge invites U.S. Great Lakes coastal communities with populations of less than 250,000 from NOAA-defined coastal shoreline counties to form multidisciplinary teams to apply to join a one-year technical assistance program.
Participating communities will leave the program with:
One coastal flooding vulnerability self-assessment,
A set of planning scenarios,
At least one identified natural or nature-based project for implementation,
One action plan,
At least two identified potential funding source(s) to support its implementation,
Access to a regional community of practice, and
Improved hard and soft skills around coastal resilience.
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Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant invites applications for faculty and graduate scholars program
Deadline: January 20, 2023
The 2023 Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) Scholars competition is now open for Graduate Students and Faculty at institutions of higher learning in Illinois or Indiana. IISG scholars programs are professional networking and development opportunities for graduate students and faculty from institutes of higher learning in Illinois and Indiana who wish to develop extension, education, or communication capacities related to their scholarly interests.
Awards are issued for one year and activities should be completed during that year. IISG expects to support 4–5 Graduate Student Scholars and 6 Faculty Scholars in 2023 beginning in March. View examples of past scholar projects in our newsroom.
For 2023, at least three of the funded Faculty Scholar projects are expected to focus on research that supports resiliency along shorelines and in coastal communities.
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Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant |
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Visiting Great Lakes Outreach Associate |
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Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is looking to hire a Visiting Great Lakes Outreach Associate to assist with a variety of science outreach and education efforts, which will include program development and enhancement, and increasing accessibility of outreach resources. The successful candidate will serve as a full time, 12-month academic professional with primary responsibility for enhancing, implementing, and evaluating environmental outreach programming.
Application due by January 3, 2023.
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Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant |
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Summer Internship |
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The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) Summer Internship Program provides undergraduate students from around the country the paid opportunity to combine social and environmental conservation science to help address issues impacting coastal communities throughout the Great Lakes. Each year, a diversity of students gain hands-on experience under the mentorship of a career professional. Skills gained cover a variety of practices in research, communication, and outreach that can help lead to Lake Michigan coastal communities making more informed decisions about resource management and everyday activities.
For detailed information on position descriptions, hourly pay, and the application process, visit the IISG Summer Internship page. For questions related to the program, please contact Angela Archer at amcbride@purdue.edu.
Application packets are due on February 6, 2023.
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Sea Grant |
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Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship |
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The application period for the 2024 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship is now open. The fellowship provides a one-year, paid experience for highly qualified early career professionals to work on issues related to coastal, marine and Great Lakes science and policy in offices within the executive or legislative branch of government in Washington, D.C.
Graduate students interested in marine, coastal, and Great Lakes science and policy should explore the information about the fellowship as soon as possible and talk to their local Sea Grant program (or the National Sea Grant Office) at least one month prior to the February 16, 2023 deadline.
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What's going on in the Great Lakes this month? Click to read more!
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Federal Policy
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A federal bill with bipartisan support could bring 20x more money to Illinois conservation efforts
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Great Lakes Policy
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Michigan, native tribes reach new Great Lakes fishing deal
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Wildlife
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Rare sightings and other surprises captivated local bird watchers throughout the year
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Coastal Planning
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In Winnetka, a plan to swap lakefront tracts with a billionaire has sparked debate. ‘I think nature belongs to all of us’
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Share Your Announcement! |
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Have an event, funding opportunity, or job posting that you'd like us to share? Send us an email and we'll include it in our newsletter next month.
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