New Brunswick, N.J. (Oct. 22, 2019) – Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s interactive NJFloodMapper has been updated and NJForestAdapt, a new data visualization and mapping tool, is now available. Both tools are aimed at helping communities and citizens plan for and become more resilient to climate change-related impacts, including sea-level rise, flooding and warmer temperatures.

NJFloodMapper is the “go to” resource for state and local coastal resilience planners. Focused on flood-related hazards in New Jersey’s 239 coastal municipalities, NJFloodMapper provides easy-to-use planning tools that allow people to quantify and visualize the impacts that rising seas, coastal flooding and other hazards will have on coastal communities, critical facilities, socially vulnerable populations, natural systems and other assets. This fall, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Rutgers finished work on updating NJFloodMapper, which includes the latest scientific projections on coastal climate risks in New Jersey. More updates are planned for later this year, including adding automated “municipal snapshots” that will provide users with even easier access to information about the people, places and assets that are at risk from coastal flood hazards.

This fall, Rutgers released NJForestAdapt to inform forest stewardship and community forestry management plans, efforts to protect watersheds, resiliency planning and adaptive management in New Jersey in the face of climate change. Users can explore current and future climate projections of temperatures and precipitation as well as maps of forest carbon, tree species distribution, pest and disease risks and other factors. Automated “municipal forestry snapshots” provide users with easy access to information about the state of forest resources in every New Jersey municipality. Links to tips and resources are provided on how to make forests more climate-resilient. NJForestAdapt was developed with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Rutgers’ New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, N.J. Division of Parks and Forestry and Northeast Regional Climate Center.

For interviews with these Rutgers experts on NJFloodMapper and NJForestAdapt, please contact Todd Bates at [email protected]

Richard G. Lathrop Jr., director of the Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis and a professor of environmental monitoring in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers–New Brunswick.

Lisa Auermuller, assistant manager and Coastal Training Program coordinator at the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Jeanne Herb, executive director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and co-facilitator of the New Jersey Climate Change Alliance.

Marjorie Kaplan, associate director of the Rutgers Climate Institute and co-facilitator of the New Jersey Climate Change Alliance

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Broadcast interviews: Rutgers University has broadcast-quality TV and radio studios available for remote live or taped interviews with Rutgers experts. For more information, contact Neal Buccino at [email protected]

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Rutgers University–New Brunswick is where Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, began more than 250 years ago. Ranked among the world’s top 60 universities, Rutgers’s flagship is a leading public research institution and a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. It has an internationally acclaimed faculty, 12 degree-granting schools and the Big Ten Conference’s most diverse student body.