USGCRP’s Coasts Interagency Group (CoastsIG) provides a venue for interagency collaboration to improve our understanding of climate-related changes affecting the Nation’s coasts and develop information and tools to help coastal communities plan adaptation strategies. The group’s activities currently fall under two interrelated workstreams: Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling and Coastal Science and Decision-Making. Both are designed to support each other and to help improve resilience in the complex landscape of the Nation’s coastal zone. The Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change (TF-SLC), previously hosted under a broader coastal inundation workstream, is now a separate USGCRP working group. CoastsIG is led by co-chairs from DOE, EPA, NASA, and NOAA.
Activities include regular meetings, with speakers on topics of general interest across the member agencies, such as efforts in specific geographic areas or innovative approaches to public–private partnerships. CoastsIG is also engaged in discussions with other interagency bodies (such as the Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services, the Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, and the White House Coastal Resilience Interagency Working Group) about coordinating coastal research activities. Ongoing efforts in each of the workstreams are highlighted below.
Coastal Science & Decision-Making
The Coastal Science & Decision-Making (CS&DM) workstream seeks to understand, catalog, and improve the network and products of federal scientists who engage with coastal stakeholders and decision-makers to promote actionable and useful scientific products.
The CS&DM workstream’s first major activity was a six-part seminar series on the science of coastal decision-making, which took place in April–May 2021. Each seminar session approached decision-making from a different perspective and invited federal and non-federal speakers. The S&DM workstream followed up on this seminar series with a three-part podcast series released via the NOAA Ocean Podcast. The episodes covered the behavior science underpinnings of individual decision-making and federal perspectives on effective coastal decision-making.
The workstream is currently undertaking a project to understand how user input gets incorporated into federal coastal decision-support tools (DSTs). This project aims to summarize findings from interviews with DST developers and managers, including common themes, challenges, and lessons learned, into a white paper and other public-facing products.
Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling
First initiated as a conceptual framework at a 2019 interagency community workshop, Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling aims to advance national and regional capabilities and infrastructure for multi-agency data and simulation products that provide the basis for understanding and managing complex water-human systems at various scales.
Following initial IHTM efforts, in November of 2020, a Coastal IHTM Coordinating Group held a joint workshop with the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice (or MSD community), a collective of university- and national lab-based researchers who work on the modeling of human and natural systems. The workshop report acknowledges the deep interconnection between coastal and inland efforts across the IHTM landscape.
Currently, the IHTM Workstream operates as a joint effort of the CoastsIG and the Integrated Water Cycle Group. The two groups worked together with university and community partners to host an “IHTM 2.0” workshop in October 2023. Access a summary of federal agency perspectives on the IHTM 2.0 workshop outcomes.
Resources
Second Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling (IHTM 2.0) Workshop: USGCRP Federal Agency Perspectives (January 2025)
This report summarizes USGCRP and member agency perspectives on the IHTM 2.0 Workshop, which brought together 160 scientists and managers from across the federal, academic, and private sectors to advance critical connections between the research and operational water resources communities in Fall 2023.
2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report (February 2022)
This report summarizes the latest guidance and projections of future sea level rise in the United States and its territories, providing a key technical input for the Fifth National Climate Assessment and other interagency tools and resources. This updates and replaces a prior report released in 2017. It was created by the Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force, a partnership effort of the former CoastsIG Inundation Workstream and the Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology. See the Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change (TF-SLC) page for more information.
Application Guide for the 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report
The episodes cover the behavior science underpinnings of individual decision-making (15 Dec 2022) and federal perspectives on effective coastal decision-making (23 Jan 2023).
Coastal Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling Workshop Report (November 2020)
This report is a joint effort of the former C-IHTM Coordinating Group and the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice and highlights the need for coastal models and computational methods and frameworks and the applications of those models and frameworks to coastal regions.