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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15062198/00001
Notes
- Abstract:
- Climate change poses an unprecedented threat to coastlines by exposing >50% of the human population
and vulnerable coastal ecosystems to changes in temperature, rainfall, storm activity, and sea level rise
(SLR), which are already having devastating impacts on coastal systems around the globe (Nicholls et al.
2007). Direct effects of climate change on coastal ecosystems are manifest in losses in wetland extent
and function as rates of SLR exceed their natural capacity to adapt (Gedan et al. 2011), while human
communities are affected through loss of life and livelihood, increased costs of disaster mitigation and
recovery, salinization of drinking water supplies, and intensified social vulnerabilities (Crate & Nuttall
2009; Oliver-Smith 2009). Possibly even more important are the effects of climate change on the interactions between humans and natural ecosystems, as growing coastal human populations further
‘squeeze’ coastal ecosystems by converting wetlands to agriculture and diverting freshwater for human
use, diminishing the capacity for coastal wetlands to re-hydrate increasingly saline aquifers with clean
water, sequester CO2, buffer storms, and provide other services upon which humans depend (Doody
2001). Despite these threats to coastal communities, pressures are largely unmitigated, partly attributable
to misunderstandings of human-resource dependencies, political agendas, nonlinearities in driverresponse
relationships, and uncertainties about sources of change and future prognoses (Jasanoff 2004;
Hobbs & Suding 2009). We need to understand how coupled human-natural systems at this land-sea
interface are jointly vulnerable to climate change through deliberate integration of long-term socioecological
research. Persistent investigations of hydrologic, biogeochemical, sedimentary, and biotic
cycles in the coastal zone are critical as they reveal ways in which coastal communities are vulnerable to, and mediate, pressures and disturbances operating at local, regional, and global scales. Resultant improved understanding of these vulnerabilities and feedbacks must also be used to assist coastal resource management through reliable forecasting of ecological and human systems.
The FCE LTER program is located on the South Florida peninsula, in a shallow-sloping (3-6 cm
km[-1]) basin underlain by a highly transmissive limestone aquifer that is exceptionally exposed to SLR,storm surges, and changes in freshwater inflows (Titus & Richman 2001; Price et al. 2010) (Fig. 2.1).
This basin contains Everglades National Park (ENP), the third largest wilderness area in the continental U.S. (6110 km[2]), as well as six million residents, generating complex socio-ecological dependencies and joint vulnerabilities. The Everglades has lost nearly half of its original extent due to land conversion and diversion of freshwater into 2500 km of canals (Davis & Ogden 1994). Changes in freshwater distribution threaten the persistence of the features for which the Everglades is characterized, including endemic species, distinctive habitats and functions (Jopp & DeAngelis 2011), and key interactions with humans both inside and outside wetland boundaries (Ogden 2011). Reduced freshwater delivery to the coastal zone and SLR are accelerating coastal transgression (Ross et al. 2000, 2002; Krauss et al. 2011; Saha et al. 2011b) (Fig. 2.2), and adjacent urban areas are experiencing residential water use restrictions. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, approved in 2000, was intended to reverse some of these trends, but has stalled due to considerable technical, economic, and political challenges. At the same time, South Florida is ill prepared to mitigate effects of, or adapt to, SLR, threatening the future of sustainable water resources for both expanding populations and this distinctive wetland ecosystem (Noss 2011). As a result, South Florida may provide one of the best examples of the sensitive balance between the pressures of SLR and increasing human demand for an increasingly limited freshwater supply, which will eventually confront coastal ecosystems worldwide.
Record Information
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- Florida International University
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