Adaptive Response Planning to Sea Level Rise in Florida and Implications for Comprehensive and Public-Facilities Planning
Permanent Link:

Material Information

Title:
Adaptive Response Planning to Sea Level Rise in Florida and Implications for Comprehensive and Public-Facilities Planning
Creator:
Deyle, Robert E.
Bailey, Katherine C.
Matheny, Anthony
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Climate change ( lcsh )
Sea level rise ( lcsh )
Coastal management ( lcsh )
Greenhouse gas mitigation ( lcsh )

Notes

Summary:
There is substantial but not complete agreement in the international scientific community that rates of sea level rise have increased in response to post-industrial global climate change. There remains, however, considerable uncertainty about precisely how high sea level will rise by any particular point in time. Projections of global sea level rise between 1990 and 2100 presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Climate Change 2007 report (Meehl et al., 2007) range from 0.6 to 2.6 feet.1 Several scientists have warned that evidence of more rapid melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets indicates that sea levels could be as much as 4.5 to 16.5 feet higher by 2100. Regardless of the rate of sea level rise over the next few decades and the measures that may be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that the earth is already committed to millennia of sea level rise because of the lag in achieving temperature equilibrium between the atmosphere and the oceans. Authors of the IPCC's Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Parry et al., 2007) argue that "the long timescales of sea-level rise suggest that coastal management, including spatial planning, needs to take a long-term view on adaptation to sea-level rise and climate change, especially with long-life infrastructure . . ." James Titus of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains that it is very likely that existing urban areas will choose to defend themselves against rising sea levels by constructing flood protection works or raising the base elevation of entire urban areas. Titus suggests that it is in areas that are not built out where other options may be feasible, but only if the planning is done now before capital investments are made in private development and public facilities and infrastructure. Thus, while uncertainty remains about the magnitude and timing of sea level rise, development decisions that are being made today are committing public and private capital to land use patterns and associated infrastructure and facilities with design lives that reach well into the period of time when the impacts of sea level rise will be felt.2 Large areas of Florida are vulnerable to increasing sea levels. Many of these areas are already developed. Thus there are likely to be substantial components of public infrastructure that already are vulnerable to sea level rise and will remain so because of their long design lives. ( English )

Record Information

Source Institution:
Florida International University
Rights Management:
Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.