Guide to Strategic Wetlands

The Guide to Strategic Wetlands is a two-page brief that introduces a spatial planning tool for conservation and community resilience planning. The brief is designed to be a resource that helps non-profits, local governments, planners, and land owners identify where strategic wetland actions can most effectively reduce flood risk, protect public infrastructure, and support community resilience across eastern North Carolina and southern Virginia. Developed by NC State University in partnership with the Albemarle–Pamlico National Estuary Partnership (APNEP), the document presents a tool uses spatial prioritization to make opportunity and need visible. It's main aim is to support early-stage planning, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and competitive funding proposals for implementation actions. While the tool begins with wetlands and community resilience as a focused use case, it is designed as a flexible framework that can integrate additional regional planning priorities such as oysters, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), and water quality to support Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) implementation. Includes a link to the beta version of the tool and an instructional user guide.