ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE GREATER EVERGLADES LANDSCAPE

Addressing the Challenge of Climate Change in the Greater Everglades Landscape is a research initiative founded by the USFWS and the USGS and carried out by the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative at Department of Urban Studies and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).


Brief Project Description
The project is an applied research effort that aims to explore comprehensively at some of the most important challenges climate change imposes on conservation planning efforts in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem through a systematic understanding of regional landscape dynamics, including urbanization, hydrology, and policy changes, this project will help inform future strategic habitat conservation (SHC).


Overall, the project has two primary approaches: 1) Stakeholder-Based & Participatory: In cooperation with a wide range of collaborators from different sectors (scenario team), understand the major challenges, and the possible actions affecting Southern Florida and its adaptation and mitigation capabilities to climate change. 2) Scenario-Based Planning and Exploration: Recognizing that there is not one-master plan that could address climate change, MIT proposes a scenario-based approach, where scenarios are employed as tools for collaboration and exploration among interested parties. It is our goal to co-develop with our local collaborators (The Southern Florida Scenario Team), a number of exploratory scenarios for the future of the region (ex, 2020, 2040 2060). Once these scenarios are generated, MIT will constructed a serious of simulation models to create future land use and land cover maps and visualizations (we call this geographic explicit results “Alternative futures”). Subsequently MIT will coordinate the evaluation of each Alternative Future with local Southern Florida scientist?. These Alternative Futures and the process of scenario generation will allow the institutions and agencies to manage more effectively strategic habitat conservation, urbanization, water, shoreline/coastal and land use management and planning. It will also allow these agencies to learn about the cumulative impacts of the possible range of decision options and biophysical conditions across sectors, as well as the impacts of the possible range of decisions options and biophysical conditions. Furthermore, it will provide a common platform for collaboration in finding ways to minimize vulnerability to climate change and propose successful cross-sector/agency actions.

The goal of this project is not to attempt to “predict” future conditions, but rather to specify a plausible range of conditions, which should be considered for planning purposes. Therefore, scenarios and their alternative futures should be seen by our collaborators and their institutions as tools for learning and awareness of a plausible future, ultimately aiming to make better-informed, tactical and strategic decisions today.