Last week, ESSIC Visiting Associate Research Professor Ariana Sutton-Grier attended a Coastal Resilience Briefing located at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The briefing, titled “Using Nature-Based Solutions to Reduce the Risk of Flooding, Save Tax Dollars, and Provide Important Habitat”, featured a panel of experts alongside the premiere of their new promotional video. Sutton-Grier, an expert on coastal resilience, represented the University of Maryland alongside the event hosts from the National Audubon Society.
The 12-minute video also features Sutton-Grier, who talks about the importance of natural infrastructure in storm protection.
“We should be putting a high priority on making sure we are protecting existing ecosystems. Where there are degraded systems, we want to be prioritizing restoring those systems,” she says.
At ESSIC, Sutton-Grier is an ecosystem ecologist with expertise in wetland ecology and restoration, biodiversity, biogeochemistry, climate change, and ecosystem services.