As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the National Stormwater Calculator, an innovative addition to the administration’s virtual climate resilience toolkit. EPA’s new calculator will help property owners, developers, landscapers, and urban planners make informed land-use decisions to protect local waterways from pollution caused by stormwater runoff.

EPA’s National Stormwater Calculator is a desktop application that estimates the annual amount of rainwater and frequency of runoff from a specific site anywhere in the United States (including Puerto Rico). Estimates are based on local soil conditions, land cover, and historic rainfall records. Users can enter any U.S. location and select different scenarios to learn how specific green infrastructure changes, including inexpensive changes like rain barrels and rain gardens, can prevent pollution.

An update to the Stormwater Calculator, which will include the ability to link to several future climate scenarios, will be released by the end of 2013. Green Infrastructure can increase the resiliency of stormwater management approaches to a changing climate, and this update will allow users to consider how runoff may vary based both on historical weather and potential future climate.