To sustain and manage ecosystem goods and services provided by tidal saline wetlands (that is, mangrove forests, salt marshes, and salt flats) for current and future generations, natural resource managers and planners need to understand where tidal saline wetlands migration is most likely to occur under a suite of region-wide sea-level rise and urbanization scenarios. As a student research contractor/GIS specialist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) Wetlands and Aquatic Research Center (WARC), I had the opportunity to collaborate on a project investigating the potential for future wetland landward migration in response to rising sea levels and increasing urbanization along the northern Gulf of Mexico. This was a multi-LCC (landscape conservation cooperative) project that partnered with different LCC's (Peninsular Florida LCC, South Atlantic LCC, Gulf Coast Plains and Ozarks LCC, and Gulf Coast Prairie LCC) extending from the Florida Keys to the South Texas/Mexico boarder. As part of this study, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), quantified the potential for tidal saline wetland landward migration along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast under alternative future sea-level rise and urbanization scenarios.

These data, including the accompanying metadata, have been made available through ScienceBase at https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/55f742a8e4b0477df11c0a2b. The digital object identifier (DOI) for these data is 0.5066/F7NK3C3D.

A user interface can be found here, https://gcpolcc.databasin.org/datasets/8c7d785c38b54494b7240a83e95e73f3

For more information see: http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ds969

Enwright, N.M., Griffith, K.T., and Osland, M.J., 2015, Incorporating future change into current conservation planning--Evaluating tidal saline wetland migration along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast under alternative sea-level rise and urbanization scenarios: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 969, http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ds969.