The increasing threat of global climate change is predicted to have immense influences on ecosystems worldwide, but could
be particularly severe to vulnerable wetland environments such as the Everglades. This work investigates the impact global
climate change could have on the hydrologic and vegetative makeup of Everglades National Park (ENP) under forecasted
emissions scenarios. Using a simple stochastic model of aboveground water levels driven by a fluctuating rainfall input, we
link across ENP a location’s mean depth and percent time of inundation to the predicted changes in precipitation from climate
change. Changes in the hydrologic makeup of ENP are then related to changes in vegetation community composition through
the use of relationships developed between two publically available datasets. Results show that under increasing emissions
scenarios mean annual precipitation was forecasted to decrease across ENP leading to a marked hydrologic change across the
region. Namely, areas were predicted to be shallower in average depth of standing water and inundated less of the time. These
hydrologic changes in turn lead to a shift in ENP’s vegetative makeup, with xeric vegetative communities becoming more
numerous and hydric vegetative communities becoming scarcer. Noticeably, the most widespread of vegetative communities,
sawgrass, decreases in abundance under increasing emissions scenarios. These results are an important indicator of the effects
climate change may have on the Everglades region and raise important management implications for those seeking to restore
this area to its historical hydrologic and vegetative condition.