4
i m pact
You’ve said the coastal zone extends about 100 miles inland, which covers all of Florida. How do you define “coastal?” Coastal isn’t just the outline of the continents. It’s as far offshore as the terrestrial environment influences and as far inland as the marine environment influences. Our summer sea breeze collision thunderstorms in Central Florida, for example, are marine in origin. And Central Florida influences the marine environment in a number of ways, including storm runoff that finds its way into estuaries. The headwaters of the Kissimmee River and the Everglades system are also here in Central Florida, so we influence the marine environment as far away as South Florida.
10 minutes with...
Graham Worthy
T
Director, UCF Coastal
What are some of the specific threats and challenges you see for coastal communities now and in the future? We’re looking at sea level rise, storm surge, coastal erosion and other direct, physical threats, but we’re also looking at the way climate change is allowing species to move into new areas — not just things like lionfish and Burmese pythons but also smaller organisms and invasive diseases like Zika. There are other issues, too. For example, in South Florida, the Floridan Aquifer, where most of our drinking water comes from, is recharged by the Everglades. But with less water in the Everglades and increasing rates of removal from the aquifer, saltwater can push into the porous limestone in place of the freshwater. You wouldn’t expect this, but Miami is among the 10 cities in the world most at risk to run out of drinking water. All of that has ramifications on our social systems and our economies. So part of our philosophy is not to look just at those issues but put them into a bigger context and understand how all of those different things interrelate.
he newly formed National Center for Integrated Coastal Research — UCF Coastal, for short — brings together engineers, biologists, chemists, economists, public policy and hazard assessment experts, emergency managers, social scientists and biomedical researchers in a massively interdisciplinary effort to address the manifold challenges facing coastal communities as a result of population growth and climate change. Aside from the sheer variety of disciplines represented by its team members, what sets UCF Coastal apart from similar think tank groups is a primary commitment to understanding the coastal zone as a cohesive ecological-social-economic system, in which human security and wellbeing are interdependent “We need to with ecological security and wellbeing. Rather than assigning blame or issuing dire warnings, UCF get stakeholders Coastal pursues practical, balanced approaches sitting at the same to making coastal communities better prepared, table and talking more resilient and more sustainable. to each other. At the center’s helm is biology department chair and Pegasus Professor Graham Worthy, an easygoing marine mammal expert committed to So what is there to be done bridging what he calls the gap between science about things like that? and society. To say that we can solve these
’’
igniteucf.org