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Southern Delaware Coastal Resilience Plan (SDCR)

Status
PLANNING IN PROGRESS COMPLETE
30%

Coast Forward: A Conversation About Preserving the Inland Bays
The Center and the community are developing the Southern Delaware Coastal Resilience Plan. Through this plan, we aim to work with community-based organizations, government agencies, and engaged community members to develop our shared vision for increasing resiliency through nature-based solutions in the Inland Bays watershed. Everyone in Southern Delaware has a role and a voice.

Project Description

The Delaware Center for the Inland Bays and its partners will determine where to locate and build nature-based solutions for coastal resilience in the Inland Bays Watershed under predicted conditions of sea level rise and increased storm activity. Nature-based solutions protect both our communities and our natural resources. Possible solutions include seagrass meadows, salt marsh enhancement, forests and forest buffers, wetlands, and policy tools for local landowners (e.g., HOAs or towns).

The project includes planning meetings, community science tools, geospatial model integration, and feedback on a priority list from DNREC, local governments, and other stakeholders.

Photo credit: Driscoll Drones

The Southern Delaware Coastal Resilience project is a process – a prioritization effort and a set of tools to help preserve the Inland Bays we all love.

Project outcomes and deliverables may include:

  • Building stewardship and collaborative action around the urgency of watershed resilience.
  • Prioritizing nature-based solutions that focus on holistic outcomes such as enhanced infrastructure resilience, improved land use, protection of vulnerable communities, and more effective flood protection. Identified projects will be transparent, interactive, and shared online via a digital dashboard.
  • Identifying watershed-wide actions like infiltration wetlands, reforestation, HOA bylaws, and land-use policies that collectively manage stormwater before it floods infrastructure and habitats.
  • Coordinating with partners to implement projects like wetland creation, stream buffer enhancements, thin-layer placement, assisted marsh migration, and beneficial reuse of dredged material.
  • Publishing a shared vision for the next 50 years, with actionable policy language to increase nature-based solutions.
  • Providing a community-accessible integrated bay-wide tool.
  • Enabling participatory science and GIS-based apps for local indicators of climate change, with community-submitted survey data feeding the system.
  • Creating a searchable GIS-based spatial database with community-identified priorities and potential project areas.

Land Acknowledgment

We acknowledge that we are living on the traditional lands of the Nanticoke and Assateague peoples. We recognize these Indigenous communities as the original stewards of the Inland Bays watershed and honor their enduring relationship with this land and water.

 Our Local Resilience Icon:

The horseshoe crab has swum the world’s oceans for over 445 million years. This icon of our Bays is among the most resilient organisms on the planet.

Resilience Strategies Include a variety of actions (some more effective than others):

  • Mitigate
  • Migrate
  • Nature-Based Solutions (our preferred approach to achieve holistic enhancement)
  • Resist
  • Start Over
  • Ignore
  • Other

 

Horseshoe Crab at James Farm

Summer 2024 Update

We developed a framework for community conversations—part educational, part discussion, and wholly interactive. These facilitator-led gatherings are designed to welcome community input in a relaxed setting—ideally, the host’s living room.

Interested in hosting? Email us at coastalresilience@inlandbays.org.

We launched and completed our Community Questionnaire between Winter 2024 and May 2025. We received 109 responses—thank you to all participants! One lucky winner received a gift package of Center items.

We also launched three new participatory science tools on Survey123:

  • Terrapin Survey
  • Osprey Survey
  • CIB, I Need a Tree!

Click here to learn more about these surveys—they track two species highly sensitive to coastal change: the diamondback terrapin and the osprey.

Coast Forward 2025 Summit Recap

Before we can move forward, we must understand where we are.

The summit opened with a snippet from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s 2023 TED Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOJR40M0as&t=4s

Participants completed a personal version of her Climate Venn Diagram, which reminds us that we already have the skills and knowledge to take action.
Download your own here: https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/climatevenn
(Share it with us at coastalresilience@inlandbays.org)

Our estuary is not static. Changes in sea level, storm intensity, land use, demographics, and economic factors demand it – our management actions should not be static either.

Key Question: What do we want the Inland Bays to look like in 50 years?

Next Steps:

  • Continue gathering feedback from community conversations, summit discussions, online questionnaires, and datasets.
  • Co-create a shared 2080 vision, supported by accessible participatory tools and a public website.

The full-day summit also included a practitioners’ meeting and a community open house focused on advancing coastal resilience.

 

Lesson One: What Does Resilience Mean?

FEMA (2024): The ability to prepare for threats and hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions.

EPA: The capacity of interconnected social, economic, and ecological systems to respond or reorganize in ways that maintain essential function, identity, and structure.

CIB Working Definition:
The ability to prepare for threats and hazards in a way that builds ecosystem services, respects the integrity of interconnected systems, adapts to change, and maintains our community’s essential function, identity, and structure.

 

Summit Item: What Are We Good At?

Strengths identified:

  • Education and demonstration projects
  • The Center for the Inland Bays
  • Peer engagement, specifically farmers
  • Working with HOAs
  • The Sussex Preservation Coalition
  • Volunteer engagement
  • Proactive organizations
  • High-quality tools

Salt marshes are resilient ecosystems, withstanding tides, storms, droughts, fire, and temperature shifts. However, they’re being squeezed out as sea levels rise and development expands. Where will we make room for salt marshes?

 

Living shorelines dissipate energy from large storm events and preserve the interface between land and water.

Learn more: Delaware Living Shorelines Committee

Trees and forest buffers improve:

  • Water and air quality
  • Wildlife habitat
  • Wind speed and temperature regulation
  • Stormwater absorption / reduce stormwater flows
  • Soil quality and health
  • Improved aesthetics

Buffer width matters:

  • 10 ft: reduces sediment runoff
  • 30 ft: reduces nitrogen
  • 100 ft: reduces flood intensity
  • 300 ft: reduces wind
  • 1,500 ft: creates wildlife corridors

Lesson Two: Education Is Ongoing

Changing conditions and new residents mean we must constantly refresh outreach and education.

Youth education is critical:
46,641 youth under 18 live in Sussex County (2023 estimate).
The Center reached 2,600+ students in 2024, exposing ~6% of the Bays’ youth to environmental programs.

Helpful Resources:

Photo credit: John Hoyt

 Summit Item: Barriers to Progress

Attendees identified key challenges:

  • Limited capacity (funding, workforce, time)
  • Frustration from project delays due to one dissenting voice
  • Difficulty prioritizing long-term benefits over short-term costs
  • Community resistance to change
  • Emotional concerns about future generations and worsening climate effects

Quotes:

“We didn’t get to the Bays’ current condition overnight. It will take time to improve.”
“I worry about my granddaughters’ future—what kind of world will they inherit?”

 

Lesson Three: Communication Is Critical

We need more conversations with leaders and changemakers, especially in underrepresented communities. True collaboration and teamwork need to be fostered.  This is not an Inland Bays only issue, but we may be affected in our own unique ways, and we have our own unique way of building resilience

 Thank You to Our Coast Forward Steering Committee

  • Danielle Swallow
  • Ashley Norton
  • Vanessa Cullen
  • Jessica Diller McIntosh
  • Lisa Swanger
  • Michelle Koenig
  • Meghan Noe Fellows

 Are you ready to host a conversation? Email us at coastalresilience@inlandbays.org.