Tool Guidance

For  climate, weather, and coastal tools in the Great Lakes Region

Overview

These tool guidance documents and tutorial videos are intended to help other users in the Great Lakes region better understand the tools and their potential applications.

• Guidance documents convey the tool’s outputs, potential applications, limitations, and underlying data sources all in one short pdf, for potential users to assess whether the tool is relevant to their work and should be explored.
• Tutorial videos provide a demonstration of the tool’s functionality and an example walkthrough interpreting various results, to help users learn how to navigate the tool.

GLISA developed these educational materials based on their experience as a potential user, and are not affiliated with any of the tools.

The Lake Level Viewer displays variations in the Great Lakes water levels through interactive maps and helps users visualize the effects of lake level fluctuations on shorelines and coastal areas.  

coast.noaa.gov/llv

The Great Lakes Water Level Dashboard allows users to access and visualize historical Great Lakes water level data, as well as forecasted water levels 6 months into the future.

glerl.noaa.gov/data/wlevels/dashboard

Michigan’s Coastlines Through Time

The interactive maps in the Michigan’s Coastlines Throughout Time tool provide a look at how historical shorelines and coastal bluffs around the state of Michigan are changing over time, with an emphasis on locating critical bluff erosion areas and assessing potential shoreline modifications using historical aerial imagery.

geospatialresearch.mtu.edu/czmp

The Climate Explorer tool provides historical observations and future projections for multiple climate indicators, including temperature and precipitation. The tool offers interactive maps and graphs that display past and projected future climate conditions, historical weather data, and historical thresholds.

crt-climate-explorer.nemac.org

FEMA Flood Maps can help identify high risk flooding areas at a given property.

fema.gov/flood-maps

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Stormwater Calculator is a planning tool that provides a comparison of how much water is collected using different green infrastructure projects such as rain gardens and green roofs, and provides planning-level estimates of costs.

epa.gov/water-research/national-stormwater-calculator

NOAA Atlas 14 Precipitation Frequency Estimates

NOAA Atlas 14 provides estimates of precipitation frequency for a specified location in the U.S. in graphical or tabular form.

hdsc.nws.noaa.gov/pfds

These materials were created through funding from Michigan Sea Grant, under a coastal resilience project. You can find these materials and other resources, including funding sources, case studies, and helpful contacts, on Michigan Sea Grant’s Coastal Resilience Resource Hub.

These tool guidance materials were published in August 2024.

GLISA Contact

Kim Channell, Climatologist, kimchann@umich.edu