Adaptation in Action
Issue #1
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Safeguarding fish, wildlife, & plants in a changing climate
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The Adaptation in Action Newsletter highlights the untold stories of climate adaptation and helps to track the progress, challenges, and opportunities to implementing these strategies. The stories shared are by practitioners and for practitioners to learn, connect, and innovate. In the face of the world's greatest environmental challenge, these are the stories from the people on the ground, taking action now to protect biodiversity. Read their stories here.
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Florida: Responding to
Sea Level Rise
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Living shorelines can help coastal areas adapt and respond to sea level rise by reducing erosion, storing carbon, improving water quality, providing habitat for fish and other wildlife, and promoting recreation. In addition, living shorelines act as natural barriers to waves and can absorb as much as 50% of incoming wave energy, providing more resilience against storms than traditional hard shoreline structures like bulkheads.
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Testing shoreline stabilization methods
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In Florida, with its highest point just 345 feet above sea level, rising tides, coastal erosion, and increasingly violent storm surges are some of the greatest challenges facing the Sunshine State in a changing climate. To combat this, staff from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and partners from University of Kansas are conducting a research project aimed at better understanding the ecological benefits of four different types of shoreline stabilization methods. They will study an existing mangrove living shoreline, implement an oyster shell living shoreline, modify an existing seawall, and use an older existing seawall. The modified seawall will have panels added to it that will provide three-dimensional relief resembling the branching of above-ground portions of mangrove roots.
Where Three sites on the southcentral Gulf Coast near Tampa, Gulfport, & Longboat Key
When July 2018 - June 2021
How Funded through State Wildlife Grants
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This project will benefit a broad suite of coastal and marine species including fish, invertebrates, sea turtles, diamondback terrapins, and shorebirds. By combining living shorelines (an important adaptation strategy) with research, Florida is getting something done on the ground while also arming managers with better information on which to base their future adaptation decisions.
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An ornate diamondback terrapin. Credit: Florida FWC
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Have you worked on, are working on, or hope to work on a living shoreline project?
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The National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy is a unified nationwide effort, reflecting shared principles and science-based practices, for addressing the threats of a changing climate on fish, wildlife, plants, and the natural systems upon which they depend.
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Join the conversation on social media using #AdaptationinAction
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