This action approves an award in the amount of $308,657 to support north carolina's environmental quality's wetland programs development programs

The goal of this project is to evaluate storm response flood storage capacity in urban piedmont wetlands in raleigh, north carolina using various methods.activities:project activities include participate in watershed planning groups and local partnerships, develop quality assurance project plan (qapp), background research, site selection and reconnaissance, data collection, obtaining external data, and database compilation, data analysis and report on findings, and story map and dissemination of results.subrecipient:this project will include a sub award to north carolina department of administration for temp employees to work on this project.outcomes:the deliverables include; semi annual and final reports, presentations, quality assurance project plan and digital mapping. The outcomes and outputs for this project include: study plan for evaluating the ecological performance of natural urban wetlands and incorporating the results/findings/lessons learned into future compensatory mitigation project decision-making to help determine mitigation program success; database to help local decision-makers integrate flood impacts and climate resiliency into wetland protection and restoration; tools to help state/local government decision-makers integrate wetland protection and restoration into integrated watershed planning especially with regards to hazard mitigation/flood/drought planning and climate resiliency; protocols and assessment criteria (flood storage) that can be used to identify wetland restoration and protection priorities especially with regard to environmental justice or climate resiliency; strategies that consider hazard mitigation/flood/drought planning, climate resiliency, and environmental justice in wetland restoration and protection; education and outreach materials for wetland staff, storm water managers and modelers, city planners, the public, and other sectors; story map presenting the walnut creek wetland flooding information in non-technical terms for communication with residents in the local communities; final technical report and public story map summarizing study results. The outcomes for this project include: increased quantity of wetlands; improved wetland protection efforts, through better understanding of flood storage benefit/function and prioritization of wetlands for protection; increased stakeholder and decisionmaker's understanding of wetland function in terms of flood attenuation; improved wetland baseline condition assessments to address hazard mitigation/flood/drought effects and climate adaptation; improved data to use in modeling potential hydrologic change, wetland losses, or wetland increases on a landscape for use in informing stakeholders and decisionmakers; increased understanding of wetland function for watershed planning staff and storm water management staff; increased stakeholder and decisionmaker's knowledge through training and outreach state/territorial/tribal wetland staff, the public, at risk communities, and/or other partners; and improved baseline information on wetland and performance to inform state regulatory programs. The intended beneficiaries for this project include the citizens of the state of north carolina.