DOI Projecf #SA067; Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief, Fire Island, NY; Coastal Resiliency Studies

This is an announcement for issuing a single source financial assistance award to Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia. This announcement is for notification purposes only. The intent of the award is to support the Department of the Interior¿s Bureaus efforts to work with local partners on coastal restoration and resiliency efforts. The area is Fire Island, Long Island, New York. Specifically, this proposal was designed to further the efforts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service¿s (Service) North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative, which has an overall goal of integrating existing data, models, and tools with foundational data and assessments of both the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the immediate response to guide decisions about where to conduct beach restoration, management and conservation action to sustain ecological function, habitat suitability for wildlife and ecosystem services, including flood abatement in the face of storm impacts and sea level rise. The following project plan aids in developing a synergistic ecological-coastal resiliency framework for a significant portion of the coastal habitat on Fire Island. It is envisioned that the project will provide key information on beach restoration, management and conservation actions for the federally-listed piping plover and other beach dependent species along the entire south shore barrier island system chain. The proposal will leverage ongoing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers¿ (Corps) monitoring (under their 1995 Breach Contingency Plan) leading to the development of information that will serve consultation and technical assistance on projects that affect plover (and migratory shorebird) habitat resiliency. As described below, the proposal will also contribute to and enhance robustness and inference of the data that Virginia Tech is collecting and analyzing for the Corps BCP project, which also has implications for coastal and ecological resiliency. The study design also couples biological and ecological sampling efforts with on-going sea level rise modeling efforts on Long Island, providing for collection and analysis of additional information to expand SLR models (nearing completion for habitat in MD and VA) for understanding future impacts of sea level rise and storms on coastal beaches and refine best management practices for future shoreline protection and restoration projects on Long Island and other areas where coastal resiliency projects are considered. Completion of this project depends on continued funding for the ongoing Corps-funded monitoring. This project was previously vetted and approved for funding by the Department of the Interior. The appropriation for this project is the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriation Act of 2013, Public Law 113-2. Criteria for funding was based on the project¿s ability to yield the greatest return on investment by taking advantage of existing science and regional planning tools for resiliency and by working with states, cities, communities, and partners who contribute to the goals of restoring and rebuilding national wildlife refuges and other federal public assets; and to increase resiliency and the capacity of coastal habitat and infrastructure and to withstand future storms and to minimize the damage incurred. This project is authorized by the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, Public Law 113-2.