Annapolis Maritime Resilience Initiative

A watershed resilience initiative develops nature-based, neighborhood-scale strategies to mitigate climate change risk for vulnerable waterfront communities.

Sea level rise, flooding, and associated erosion present significant challenges to the infrastructure, environment, and diverse communities of Annapolis, Maryland. The Annapolis Maritime Resilience Initiative (AMRI) was developed as a partnership between the Resilience Authority of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, and the City of Annapolis to identify and prioritize sites impacted by these issues for ecological restoration and regenerative design projects. The sites planned under the AMRI aim to provide collective protection with multiple community-based efforts executed in a way that supports the collective protection of at-risk areas and groups with less resources to prepare for climate disruptions. As part of a team led by Greenvest LLC, Biohabitats helped identify, characterize, and assess vulnerability and opportunities to use nature-based solutions to reduce climate risk within the Spa Creek and Back Creek watersheds under the AMRI.

Biohabitats performed site visits and supported data collection, which included summarizing field observations, providing electronic mark-ups of constraints mapping, project team coordination, and technical assistance. Biohabitats helped develop a prioritized site selection matrix and list of desired program outcomes before preparing 10% preliminary schematic plans. These plans included main project elements, proposed features, and expected benefits. After providing plan review and value engineering, Biohabitats completed a summary of anticipated success criteria, metrics, and monitoring requirements for each project type.

Biohabitats’ proposed plans, technical approach narrative, and summary of next steps were included in the final master plan. The community-scale strategies developed under the AMRI have created a framework for future design and implementation that will ultimately afford the people and infrastructure within a vulnerable watershed with more resilience against the threats of climate change.