The Climate Ready Estuaries program works to help the National Estuary Programs and all environmental mangers to address climate change in watersheds and coastal areas. This effort, initiated in 2008, brings together EPA's Oceans and Coastal Protection Programs  and Climate Change Programs to build additional capacity in the NEPs and coastal communities as they prepare to adapt to the effects of climate change. The EPA Office of Research and Development and Climate Ready Water Utilities are supporting this effort as well.

Climate Ready Estuaries assists NEPs and coastal communities in becoming "climate ready" by providing tools and assistance to assess climate change vulnerability and plan for adaptation.

As part of the Climate Ready Estuaries program, EPA will coordinate and communicate with other federal agencies and external partners that work on coastal adaptation efforts to:

• share information,
• identify opportunities for collaboration, and
• minimize duplication of effort.

Learn More about CRE

Mission and Methodology

• EPA press release announcing the Climate Ready Estuaries program, June 19, 2008
• "Creating Climate Ready Estuaries" in NOAA's Coastal Services magazine, May/June 2009 edition
• EPA Watershed Academy webcast "Climate Change Adaptation Tools for Addressing Water Issues" December 2, 2010
• "Interview with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Ready Estuaries Program" Exitin The Coastal Society Bulletin (2011)

Practice and Progress

• "Priming Coastal Managers to Think about Rolling Easements as an Option for Sea Level Rise" in NOAA's Coastal Services magazine, September/October 2011 edition
• Climate Ready Estuaries Progress Reports (published annually for 2009–2012)
• Lessons Learned from the Climate Ready Estuaries Program (3 reports)
• Climate Ready Estuaries program brochure

CRE Publications

Syntheses, monographs, methodologies and tools can be found on the Coastal Adaptation Toolkit and Risk-Based Adaptation pages.