Late Holocene Sea Level Rise in Southwest Florida: Implications for Estuarine Management and Coastal Evolution
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LATE HOLOCENE SEA LEVEL RISE IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA: IMPLICATIONS FOR ESTUARINE MANAGEMENT AND COASTAL EVOLUTION Dana Derickson, Figure 2 FACULTY Lily Lowery, University of the South Mike Savarese, Florida Gulf Coast University Stephanie Obley, Flroida Gulf Coast University Leonre Tedesco, Indiana University and Purdue Monica Roth, SUNYOneonta University at Indianapolis Ramon Lopez, Vassar College Carol Mankiewcz, Beloit College Lora Shrake, TA, Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis VISITING and PARTNER SCIENTISTS Gary Lytton, Michael Shirley, Judy Haner, STUDENTS Leslie Breland, Dave Liccardi, Chuck Margo Burton, Whitman College McKenna, Steve Theberge, Pat O’Donnell, Heather Stoffel, Melissa Hennig, and Renee Dana Derickson, Trinity University Wilson, Rookery Bay NERR Leda Jackson, Indiana University and Purdue Joe Kakareka, Aswani Volety, and Win University at Indianapolis Everham, Florida Gulf Coast University Chris Kitchen, Whitman College Beth A. Palmer, Consortium Coordinator Nicholas Levsen, Beloit College Emily Lindland, Florida Gulf Coast University LATE HOLOCENE SEA LEVEL RISE IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA: IMPLICATIONS FOR ESTUARINE MANAGEMENT AND COASTAL EVOLUTION MICHAEL SAVARESE, Florida Gulf Coast University LENORE P. TEDESCO, Indiana/Purdue University at Indianapolis CAROL MANKIEWICZ, Beloit College LORA SHRAKE, TA, Indiana/Purdue University at Indianapolis PROJECT OVERVIEW complicating environmental management are the needs of many federally and state-listed Southwest Florida encompasses one of the endangered species, including the Florida fastest growing regions in the United States. panther and West Indian manatee. Watershed The two southwestern coastal counties, Collier management must also consider these issues and Lee Counties, commonly make it among of environmental health and conservation. the 5 fastest growing population centers on nation- and statewide censuses. Although not Water management in Southwest Florida is heavily industrialized, urban and suburban overseen by the South Florida Water growth has taxed water resources, and Management District (SFWMD). This state agricultural development has both increased agency is empowered with this difficult task of freshwater demands and created point source compromising freshwater needs, storm water pollution. Consequently, management of management, and the maintenance of freshwater is a major societal concern. ecological health. Water delivery is Because rainfall is seasonal, water managers principally controlled by a system of storm must both retain freshwater for use during the water retention ponds, canals, and weirs. dry season (winter and spring) and prevent Typically management practices function to storm flooding during the wet season (summer hold as much water a watershed can maintain and fall). to recharge groundwater aquifers until some critical threshold level is achieved when water Counter to water management constraints are is then abruptly released from the weirs. Such environmental concerns. Southwest Florida, if practices, though effective for society’s left unaltered, would exist as a network of concerns, can be harmful to life within the wetlands that drain principally through sheet estuaries downstream of the freshwater flow into coastal estuaries. Freshwater and release. Although estuarine ecosystems can brackish water ecosystems are delicately handle large fluctuations in salinity and the adapted for these conditions. Water quality is water quality alterations that accompany them, germane for their health. These habitats are sudden and persistent changes can be somewhat unique. Southwest Florida sits detrimental (i.e., an ecological phenomenon within a narrow strip of the West Indian known as “pulsing”). The practice is also biogeographic province that is separated from wasteful of freshwater. The canal system was the majority of the province’s real estate by designed before Southwest Florida’s the Straits of Florida. Consequently, there are population boom, when freshwater was not numerous endemic species, relict biotas, and viewed as a limiting resource. Consequently, ecosystems perched for extinction. Further improved water management practices are These environmental problems are needed to account for these risks and to exacerbated by longer term, natural variability minimize waste. occurring along the Southwest Florida coast. Superposed upon the decadal environmental What this conflict means is that Southwest variability generated by human alteration of Florida is an ideal laboratory for coastal environments are natural, longer experimentation – a venue for better period, centennial and millennial scale understanding the scientific basis for fluctuations that are seriously impacting “research-founded” resource management and coastal geomorphology and the distribution of environmental restoration (often referred to as environments. Although these are arguably “best management practices”). If we are uncontrollable through standard practices of willing to accept the inevitability of environmental management, they are of vital development, then scientifically sound concern to regional planning. First, Southwest management practices are necessary. Rookery Florida must anticipate the longer-term Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve environmental effects. It would be futile to (RBNERR), managed by the Florida State develop management strategies or restoration Department of Environmental Protection and plans that were discordant with those less one of NOAA’s National Estuarine Reserves, controllable effects. Second, many of the is centered within much of this critical planet’s longer-term environmental problems estuarine habitat (Figure 1). The Reserve is stewarded with the management and (e.g., sea level rise, greater storm frequency and intensity) are at least partial indirect preservation of over 100,000 acres of tidally consequences of anthropogenic change. influenced land. Because an estuary is nothing more than the downstream sum of its Among the assortment of global problems, sea freshwater parts, the Reserve is also interested level rise is perhaps the greatest threat to in affecting the practices that go on higher up estuarine environmental change. In southern in the watersheds. Consequently, the Reserve Florida, Holocene sea level rise has had manages a large, public lands acquisition significant control on the geomorphology of project whereby sensitive headlands are the coast (Wanless & Parkinson, 1989; purchased and placed into public trust. Wanless et al., 1994). Barrier islands are common, but not unique to Southwest Florida. A number of watersheds within Rookery Bay Reserve are targeted for restoration as part of However, the anastamosing geometry present within the protected inner bays, a by-product the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration of the development of oyster reefs and Plan (CERP). Most of these efforts strive to restore the prehistoric patterns of sheet flow subsequent mangrove settlement (details to follow), is unique to our region. Mangrove- that existed prior to water resource management for suburban and agricultural rimmed estuaries are only found within the needs. Two basic types of estuarine West Indian biogeographic province, making the southern tip of the Florida peninsula environmental problems exist as a consequence. Some estuaries are robbed of environmentally different from the rest of freshwater as an effect of freshwater storage or North America. Persistence of this diversion (e.g., Blackwater River; Figure 1). geomorphology depends upon a moderate rate Other estuaries are inundated or pulsed with of sea level rise (Parkinson, 1989). A sea freshwater during the rainy season due to level rise rate that grossly exceeds rate of storm water management practices or the sedimentation destabilizes oyster reef and mangrove island development. Recent draining of wetlands through channelization of measurements of sea level rise rates (Maul & flow (e.g., Henderson Creek, Faka-Union Bay; Martin, 1993) suggest that this critical Figure 1). Restoration projects for these estuaries, and their respective watersheds, are threshold has been exceeded since the beginning of industrialization in the late 19th in various stages of development, with most Century. Rates over the last century have still in the planning phases. been measured between 20-40 cm / 100 years, an orderofmagnitude higherthanthe rate that Figure 1. Aerial photograph mosaic of estuarine environments in Southwest Florida. Ten Thousand Islands are located southeast of Marco Island. Faka-Union and Blackwater estuaries, and the intervening bays, were the sites used by most of the student projects. has persisted for the last 3000 years (Figure 2; mangrove forest development. Mangroves are Wanless et al., 1994). Recent historical able to tolerate high salinities and, therefore, measurements of sea level have only been recruit to tidally influenced areas. made since the installation of tide gauge Additionally, their production of leaf litter and monitoring stations. In southern Florida, this root mass results in a sedimentation rate that amounts to less than 100 years of recording slightly exceeds the modest rate of sea level (Figure 3). Consequently, it is difficult to rise (Cahoon & Lynch, 1997). (Three species assess whether or not the recent higher rates of mangroves predominate, Rhizophora are merely a natural anomaly or if this truly mangle (red mangrove), Avicennia germinans represents the anthropogenic forcing of (black mangrove),