Abstract
The entire coast of Florida is vulnerable to rising sea levels, storm surges, and episodic inundation. The threatened assets on the highly developed and urbanized southeast coast include expensive high-rise hotels and condos while those on the “Nature Coast” fronting the Gulf of Mexico are primarily unique natural ecosystems. Both coasts are already experiencing recurrent inundation for different reasons. Model projections, suggest that by 2050 Miami sea levels could be up to 1 meter higher than at present. Land losses on the highly sensitive Gulf Coast could involve eastward displacement of the coast by several kilometers.
For nineteen years my vision was bounded by forests, but to-day, emerging from a multitude of tropical plants, I beheld the Gulf of Mexico stretching away unbounded, except by the sky.
—John Muir, upon reaching Cedar Key on the West Coast of Florida (from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, published 1916)
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Wright, L.D., Nichols, C.R., Zarillo, G. (2019). Florida. In: Wright, L., Nichols, C. (eds) Tomorrow's Coasts: Complex and Impermanent. Coastal Research Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75453-6_14
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