Building the scientific foundation for coastal wetland protection, restoration planning, monitoring, and climate resilience in Nova Scotia.

Blue Maritimes is developing a coastal wetland baseline program to help partners understand current site conditions, carbon and ecosystem values, risks, restoration opportunities, and monitoring needs. The program focuses on generating credible baseline data and decision-support tools before larger mitigation, restoration, compensation, or climate resilience actions move forward.

What this program does

This program combines field-based data, GIS mapping, laboratory analysis, and scientific interpretation to produce a clearer picture of coastal wetland systems in Nova Scotia. It is designed to support responsible environmental decisions by showing what is present, what is at risk, and what should be monitored over time.

Core activities

  • Field-based baseline data
    Collect site-level information through appropriate field methods, including soil or sediment sampling, site descriptors, photos, GPS points, and vegetation observations.

  • Carbon and ecosystem assessment
    Support analysis of soil or sediment carbon, ecosystem condition, hydrological context, and environmental drivers that influence wetland function.

  • GIS mapping and site profiles
    Produce maps and site profiles that help partners understand location, risk, opportunity, and relevance for restoration or monitoring.

  • Monitoring design
    Develop practical recommendations for future monitoring, including indicators, methods, timing, and reporting needs.

  • Decision-support products
    Translate technical findings into reports, summaries, maps, briefs, and recommendations that partners can use.

Why it matters

Coastal wetlands provide major public benefits, including flood protection, biodiversity, water quality, carbon storage, and climate resilience. But these benefits are often difficult to include in planning or funding decisions without credible baseline data. This program helps close that gap by producing evidence that can support conservation, restoration planning, monitoring, and responsible environmental compensation discussions.

Expected outputs

  • Baseline dataset

  • GIS map set

  • Site profiles

  • Carbon and ecosystem condition summary

  • Monitoring recommendations

  • Technical report

  • Plain-language public summary

  • Next-step project roadmap

Who this supports

This program is designed for conservation organizations, municipalities, public agencies, funders, researchers, land stewards, and community partners working on coastal resilience, wetland protection, restoration planning, mitigation, monitoring, or environmental compensation support.

Want to learn more?

Blue Maritimes welcomes conversations with funders, conservation partners, municipalities, researchers, and public-interest organizations interested in supporting or collaborating on coastal wetland baseline work in Nova Scotia.

Coastal Wetland Baseline Program

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Coastal Resilience Readiness Assessment