Green Infrastructure - Wisconsin Coastal Atlas

Wisconsin Coastal Atlas > Topics > Green Infrastructure

Green stormwater infrastructure practices such as rain gardens, green roofs, bioswales, porous pavement, and constructed wetlands hold great promise for reducing urban flooding and increasing water quality. These resources help measure the effectiveness of green infrastructure practices, remove barriers to their implementation, and apply collaborative approaches to design scenarios across a range of scales from individual sites to entire watersheds.

Getting Started

Green Infrastructure

Environmental Protection Agency

This website provides information to help you learn more about green infrastructure and its benefits, find resources to implement green infrastructure practices, and collaborate with green infrastructure partners across the United States.

What is Green Infrastructure?

Environmental Protection Agency

This website defines green infrastructure, explains why it is beneficial, and provides several examples of types of green infrastructure.

Review and Prioritize Green Infrastructure Practices

Green Values Stormwater Management Calculator

Center for Neighborhood Technologies

This tool is designed to help plan green infrastructure solutions to prevent flooding for single buildings or larger neighborhood and community scale efforts. The calculator helps planners, landscape architects, municipal staff, and homeowners explore the value of green infrastructure.

Green Infrastructure Effectiveness Database

NOAA Office for Coastal Management

This database provides information on the effectiveness of green infrastructure to reduce the impacts of flooding and erosion as well as the economics of green infrastructure.

Minnesota Stormwater Manual

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

This manual is a comprehensive guide that helps users navigate the regulations, designs, and technologies related to stormwater infrastructure.

Community-enabled Lifecycle Analysis of Stormwater Infrastructure Costs (CLASIC)

The Water Research Foundation

CLASIC is a screening tool utilizing a lifecycle cost framework to support stormwater infrastructure decisions on extent and combinations of green, hybrid green-gray and gray infrastructure practices.

Explore the Landscape

Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper

NOAA Office for Coastal Management

This online visualization tool creates a collection of user-defined maps that show the people, places, and natural resources exposed to coastal flooding.

Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Viewer

U.S. Geological Survey

The MRLC Viewer displays land cover and land condition data from various sources, including land cover and impervious surface data as well as tree canopy cover.

Surface Water Data Viewer

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

This map displays a variety of data related to Wisconsin’s surface waters, including floodplains, dams, wetlands, and impaired waterways.

Analyze Conditions

The Wisconsin Rainfall Project

Hydroclimate Extremes Research Group, UW-Madison; Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts

This map visualizes present-day extreme rainfall statistics and projections of future extreme rainfall statistics.

NOAA Atlas 14

NOAA Office of Water Prediction

This resource provides precipitation frequency estimates as well as temporal distributions of heavy rainfall.

Wisconsin Risk Assessment Flood Tool

Wisconsin Department of Health Services

This map combines environmental data such as FEMA’s flood hazard layer and current precipitation information with social data like the Social Vulnerability Index and the locations of schools and healthcare providers for the state of Wisconsin.

i-Tree Canopy

i-Tree

This tool classifies land and tree cover across a given area using aerial imagery. The tool also provides information about tree canopy benefits related to stormwater runoff.

Engage Communities and Adapt

Tackling Barriers to Green Infrastructure: An Audit of Local Codes and Ordinances

Wisconsin Sea Grant

This workbook helps communities review, revise, and prioritize local codes and ordinances to promote and advance green infrastructure implementation.

Nature-Based Shoreline Options for the Great Lakes Coasts

PBS Wisconsin

This guidebook describes different types of nature-based shoreline techniques suitable for the Great Lakes and shares case studies of their implementation.

Uses of GeoDesign to Guide Green Infrastructure for Urban Stormwater Management

Wisconsin Sea Grant

This site provides a list of tools and resources that can be used to plan and map green infrastructure in a community.

Connect through Networks

Green Infrastructure Community of Practice

North Central Region Water Network

This group shares and trains professionals on methods and tools to understand and assess green infrastructure and stormwater practices and helps communities

Infrastructure Working Group

Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts

This group addresses technical issues that the engineering community faces in designing, operating and maintaining Wisconsin’s infrastructure and future considerations for the construction sectors.

One Block at a Time

Minnesota Sea Grant

This project seeks to increase community resilience to climate hazards, particularly the impacts of flooding, in vulnerable frontline communities across the Great Lakes.