In this NOAA B-WET meaningful watershed educational experience (MWEE), students learn that climate change, a real-world process with anthropogenic influence, is causing sea-level rise and other events. Participating teachers receive Continuing Education Units and stipendsupport, as well as climate change instruction introducing the Community Resilience Index (CRI); a tool used by community leaders to prioritize projects pertaining to climate-related problems. Students are assigned a scenario developed by project partners, describing an infrastructure, transportation, social or economic deficiency identified by communities along the northern Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Student teams researches their assigned scenario and develop mitigation strategies using the CRI. Top teams compete in the Stewardship Summit and present their solutions to local professionals working on community resilience concerns. These professionals gain fresh ideas from student proposals, and students are empowered to act in ways that make their communities safer. To date 8 teachers from the northern Gulf Coast have participated in the project and 206 students have participated in the stewardship summit.

This session will enhance knowledge about the value of building codes and how higher standards can improve the disaster response and recovery process in local government jurisdictions. Stephen Deal, with MS-AL Sea Grant, and Sonja Sheffield, with Smart Home America, will provide a brief overview of building codes and their value to pre-disaster mitigation. Following this overview, information will be provided about Smart Home's Code Supplement, which provides beyond-code protection against natural disasters such as hurricanes and high wind and hail. Attendees will also discover how the Code Supplement's standards have been successfully integrated into Alabama communities' planning practices and what outreach is being done to promote the use of the supplement in other cities and states.
Session attendees will learn about different components of the FORTIFIED construction programs, such as FORTIFIED Roof, FORTIFIED Commercial, and the newly conceived FORTIFIED Multifamily. Attendees will also learn about the building science and research conducted by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) and how that work serves as the foundation for the FORTIFIED program. The material covered in this session will focus on crucial coastal issues such as disaster planning and recovery and how communities can benefit from increased information exchange and training on cutting-edge building practices and construction techniques.

The southeast United States has a disproportionately large number of tornadoes resulting in fatalities compared to the rest of the country. Researchers have attributed this to several factors including, tornadoes that occur at night across rugged terrain and tornadic activity that persists throughout the year rather than within a defined season. Of importance prior research has identified lack of adequate shelter, a high number of people in vulnerable conditions and lack of visibility of tornadoes as contributing factors to higher fatality rates.
In order to address these vulnerabilities, the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium have partnered to build an extension program centered around community severe weather preparedness and resilience for VORTEX-SE (Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment Southeast).
As severe weather continues to place people and property at risk, we are continually striving to be creative in bridging the gap that exists between research, forecasting, and local action (individuals/families). The neighborhood level approach outlined in this presentation is aimed at empowering individuals to understand their role in helping one another in the event of severe weather and acquiring the skills to respond. The development of neighborhood level curriculum and training will be discussed which aims to strengthen social networks within neighborhoods and identify safe sheltering options for those with/without transportation, as well as disseminate information on how to find shelters. Neighbors can acquire skills necessary for appropriate response during a disaster and can collectively take action to protect people and property.

The Alabama Forestry Commission (AFC) established the AFC Coastal Program as a new and innovative initiative to provide extra focus on enhancing water quality in forested watersheds connected to coastal Alabama. This program has allowed the AFC to allocate additional resources to benefit forests in Alabama's coastal county watersheds. The Program also provides financial and technical assistance to forest landowners to assist in implementation of forest management activities on their lands.
Forested watersheds provide a multitude of ecological services including erosion control, water quality improvement, wildlife and aquatic habitat, and water storage. In addition to the ecological benefits, a properly managed forest can yield significant economic returns for the landowners which are then utilized to implement additional activities that are ecologically beneficial. The AFC's Coastal Watershed Enhancement Program (CWEP) provides services and financial assistance to landowners to implement invasive species control primarily through mechanical stand treatments, forest management planning and certification activities, and education and outreach programs regarding the importance of forests in maintaining water quality. Stand reestablishment, prescribed fire, and urban forestry are also components of the program.
The AFC anticipates growing this program with partners, including adjacent gulf coast states, in order to maximize the water quality enhancement benefits across the Gulf of Mexico.