Resources for Adapting

Adaptation inspiration video series

Watch our new short video series: Adaptation Inspiration to learn more about Hudson Valley communities taking climate smart action. All videos are now available with English or Spanish captions!

You can also view our entire Hudson Valley Climate Resilience playlist in YouTube.

Funding assistance

There are over 15 state and public grant and loan programs totaling over $170 million to help support projects related to climate resilience in your community. To learn more, you can visit our Funding climate adaptation and resilience webpage. Many of these programs are lumped into the NYS Consolidated Funding Application which is due annually in July. If you've missed this year's deadline, now is good time to start preparing for the next round.

New resources

Hudson Dynamic Shorelines

Learn about flood and shoreline resilience by exploring this Storymap covering Land, Water, and People, Big Storms and Rising Waters, Living with Floods, and Best Practices for Managing Shorelines. Created by NYS Sea Grant.

Flood Resilience for Public Access Sites Along the Hudson River

From Troy to Yonkers: The Handbook (PDF) is now available to help owners and managers of public river access sites adapt their facilities to existing and predicted flooding. By planning and implementing resilience strategies and public outreach plans, managers of such sites can reduce their vulnerability and continue to provide access under changing conditions. This handbook serves that effort by providing site owners and managers with guidelines to reduce damage, costs, and other consequences associated with the effects of climate change, and begin planning for resilience.

Lead with Listening

A Guidebook for Community Conversations on Climate Migration: This new guidebook is based on interviews with 40+ people with direct experience with climate risk and displacement to offer insights on how to begin conversations about relocation - questions to ask yourself before you approach a community, phrases to use other than "managed retreat,” and actions and activities you can take to open up a conversation with curiosity and care. The guidebook isn’t exhaustive - it’s just the beginning. Every place and person is different, which means there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to talking about climate migration. There might be some insights or activities that resonate with you, and others that do not. That’s okay! Take in what is helpful and serves you and your community best, and please let the Climigration Network know what you learn in the process.

Waterfront design principles

To be resilient, waterfront designs should:

Meet the standards for receiving all applicable state and local permits and be justifiable as reasonable and necessary
Consider up-to-date maps and data (see links below for regional climate projections and mappers for flooding and tidal wetland migration, etc.) on current and future projected conditions
Adequately and cost-effectively withstand flood and erosion risk now and over the life of the project
Be cost-effective over the long term given operation, ongoing maintenance and replacement costs
Maintain and add ecological value to the site(s) by conserving or restoring existing natural features and their potential pathways to migrate over time (for example, wetlands moving upland with sea-level rise)
Improve or create water-dependent or water-enhanced uses and/or relocate water independent uses out of risk areas
Aim to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and mitigate negative impacts like green gentrification
Create new opportunities for public access, education and/or interpretation that can be enjoyed throughout the year
Address contaminated soils, brown fields, etc.

Digital landscape architecture design of a waterfront with park and buildings. — Image by L. Li and X. Wan, 2018 CaD studio.

Flood alerts

View predicted flooding conditions and sign up for alerts through Stevens Institute of Technology Flood Advisory System.

Technical assistance

New York State provides communities with a roadmap and funding support to mitigate and adapt to climate change through the Climate Smart Communities program. Communities can also receive up to 50 hours of free, on-demand support through its sister program Clean Energy Communities.

A group of people examine documents over a table.

Take action on climate

Get involved with your local government to help your community take climate smart actions (see Technical Assistance section). Don't know where to start? See if your community has a group working on environmental and sustainability projects, like a Conservation Advisory Commission or call your municipality's main line to ask where to look. You can also download our Climate Summary for Communities to learn about the major climate hazards, risks and opportunities Hudson Valley municipalities face.

Five actions you can take to adapt to climate change

As an individual

Plant trees and add shade structures to your yard, particularly over roofs and pavement
Explore a mapper (below) to see if your property may be affected by flooding and sea-level rise
If you live in a floodplain, have an emergency plan and raise utilities and critical systems to a higher floor in your home
Use rain barrels to capture rainwater for watering your garden and lawn
Install a battery or generator backup system so you can keep critical appliances running during a storm

As a community

Require better building standards that consider flooding and future sea-level rise in the floodplain
Plant trees and add other shade structures in public spaces for cooling
Use green infrastructure to manage stormwater in developed areas
Implement a water conservation and reuse program
Right-size culverts and bridges to enable aquatic species migration and allow adequate flow during flooding events

Five actions you can take to mitigate to climate change