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Ecosystem design is based on a simple premise – nature does it best. Natural features adapted over centuries provide the best protection from natural hazards – think the roots of coastal mangroves serving as a wave break to prevent coastal flooding.

Over the past three years, teams of º£½ÇÉçÇø researchers from disciplines across campus have been working with the US Army Corps of Engineers on a series of projects designed to deploy important ecosystem services in a new way - to protect valuable military infrastructure located in coastal areas.  

The CREATED project represents the latest step in the series – a one year $2.5 million effort to test-run specific ecosystem designs in landscapes designated to represent areas of concern for the military.

Matt Hiatt, an associate professor in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences, or DOCS, will serve as project head. Clint Willson, Dean of º£½ÇÉçÇø CC&E, and Robert Twilley, a DOCS professor and º£½ÇÉçÇø vice president of Research and Economic Development, are serving as co-PIs, as are Matthew Brand and Chris Kees, both faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Traci Birch of the º£½ÇÉçÇø School of Architecture.

Researchers on CREATED will be coordinating with a sister project, PREDICT, an effort to build predictive modeling and simulation tools for short- and long-term dynamics in coastal basins. Together the two projects are the successors to ACTIONS, an effort to understand the ecosystem services provided by different landscape features, and DEEDS, a project to build a library of potential designs to be used.  

CREATED is where plans go into action, as researchers take specific designs and use modeling and other techniques to apply them to three specific sites in areas vulnerable to flooding around the Gulf Coast – Bioloxi and the area around Keesler Air Force Base, Port Fourchon and its surrounding community, and the Morganza to the Gulf environmental levee.

They are conducting a trade-off analysis that takes into account potential impacts as it looks for three major benefits: first and foremost, coastal flooding, followed by a given feature’s ability to sequester carbon and reduce excess nutrients in the water.   

Their goal? To paint a full picture of the impacts of each design, its costs and benefits, before it is piloted in the real world.

For example, researchers will look at how the deltaic wetlands may provide protection against rising seas, and also serves as a carbon sink. Features such as riparian and floodplain wetlands, intertidal salt marshes, mangroves, reefs and barrier islands as they seek to optimize the ecosystem services.

It’s an iterative process, with researchers simulating the impacts of each design on a given area to learn benefits and potential negative impacts, taking into account local knowledge and community impact.   

Building a Digital Twin

One form of conducting this analysis is the creation of a digital twin, a virtual doppleganger of a real-world landscape. It’s an innovative tool that is frequently employed in other contexts, such as industrial applications, and would be a new way for CREATED researchers to test out costs and benefits.  

It’s an ambitious attempt to build a virtual version of a real system, more comprehensive and flexible than a traditional model. Traditional models let you see the results after they are run, Hiatt said. A digital twin would potentially be a model researchers could actively, and in real time, modify.