| The goal of the project is to develop an integrated sea level rise adaptation planning process that will identify potential impacts of future sea level rise on coastal habitats and species, design ecological migration corridors, and build governance and civic capacity for adaptation. The planning process will be tested in the Matanzas Basin of Northeast Florida in partnership with the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, and with the aim of documenting a transferable model for use by other reserves in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS). The Matanzas Basin planning process has four components: (1) technical analyses and background research, (2) visualization and communication of research findings, (3) collaborative workshops with stakeholders, and (4) local social science and coordination to support planning following the project’s conclusion. To a lesser extent, the project will verify and coordinate the local habitat migration corridor design with statewide ecological greenways planning that incorporates sea level rise considerations. To enable development of the transferable model, the project includes evaluation of the Matanzas Basin process and investigation of the needs and conditions of reserves in the NERRS. Concerns with process transferability and innovation lead to a variety of applied and scholarly questions for each researcher, and
the data and analysis needs for these studies will be coordinated with the project. |
