Now and Into the Future: Restoration Shapes South Florida's Resilience

By Dr. Meenakshi Chabba, Ecosystem & Resilience Scientist

With the delivery of clean freshwater from the River of Grass all the way to the coastlines, restoration is revitalizing South Florida's degraded natural systems. These include the iconic Everglades ecosystems and the much-revered coastal bays and estuaries that provide indispensable life-supporting benefits to wildlife and people.

In the 2024 biennial review of Everglades restoration progress, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine noted the unmistakable gains of restoration evident from the improved hydrological and ecological conditions in the Everglades, where projects had reached completion or were near completion. Restoration, by definition, attempts to undo the mistakes of the past. Twenty-five years into its authorization, Everglades restoration is increasingly being recognized for its prescience in anticipating the needs of the future. Alongside the recovery of degraded ecosystems, Everglades restoration is not just building resilience for urban communities today, but preparing them for a climate-resilient and sustainable tomorrow.

What Does Resilience Mean for South Florida?

We understand resilience as the ability of people and ecosystems to withstand, prepare, and learn to adapt to sudden changes (e.g., algal blooms in estuaries or flooding in neighborhoods) or long-term changes (e.g., sea level rise), and to gradually transform themselves into sustainable societies. The numerous social and economic benefits from the Everglades are fundamental elements of building urban resilience and enhancing quality of life. Restoration ensures that these multiple benefits continue to be available to communities in South Florida.

How Does Restoration Support Clean Water and a Strong Economy?

For urban communities, resilience begins with clean drinking water, and the Everglades is the source of this life-sustaining resource for millions of Floridians. Despite the demands of rapid development, restoration sustains the recharging of the Biscayne Aquifer with high quality, clean drinking water, providing water security to millions. Clean freshwater nourishes ecosystems, coastal bays, and estuaries. These natural areas fuel a $309 billion economy that supports a diversity of small- and large-scale tourism, real estate, and recreation businesses across the state. Known as the ForEverglades Clean Water Economy, it creates sustainable livelihoods, fostering the essentials of economic well-being and a thriving quality of life for communities.

How Is Restoration Helping Communities Adapt to Extreme Weather?

In recent years, the impacts of extreme weather have become evident with sea level rise, significant flooding, severe heat, and intense rainfall events in South Florida, affecting both natural and urban communities. In this new reality, Everglades restoration is proving to be a critical element in South Florida’s battle against extreme weather. Foremost, restoration is protecting communities by helping them adapt to the severe impacts that are here and now.

The extant risk of saltwater intrusion into the shallow limestone Biscayne Aquifer is increasing manifold with rising sea levels. This is a primary consequence of Everglades drainage exacerbated by the unsustainable urban development over the last several decades. This intrusion could harm the drinking water supply for millions of South Floridians. In response, the increased freshwater flows from restoration that recharge the Biscayne Aquifer also counterbalance the saltwater pressure and provide a unique opportunity to slow down saltwater intrusion and secure our water supply further into the uncertain future.

Furthermore, restoration-led freshwater flow hydrates habitats across the peninsula and builds their natural resilience to extreme heat, drought, and storm-related impacts. The revitalization and strengthening of the vast Everglades sawgrass marshes, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs builds a formidable natural infrastructure along our coastlines, preventing erosion, building land elevation in the face of sea level rise, and protecting ecosystems and urban communities against frequent flooding impacts from storms and storm surges.

Can Restoration Improve Flood Protection?

Additionally, restoration is modernizing urban infrastructure on which our everyday survival and modern economy depend. South Florida is at risk from different forms of flooding, given its low elevation underlain by porous limestone rock, exposure to frequent storms and intense rainfall events, and rising sea levels.

A highly engineered flood control system, made of a dense network of thousands of miles of canals and levees, pump stations, and structures, functions throughout the year to drain excess flood water into the ocean to protect our homes and industries from flooding. However, this gravity-based system is now aging, failing under the demands of rapid urbanization, and unable to cope with rising sea levels.

Here, too, restoration is playing a critical first step by building reservoirs in the Everglades to enhance the capacity of the entire region to store excess rainwater. This augments the flood control system’s ability to manage flood waters, provide flood protection to urban communities, and create a more climate-resilient South Florida.

How Does Restoration Help Mitigate Future Impacts?

Finally, restoration is helping mitigate extreme weather impacts. Numerous studies have confirmed that the additional water from restoration will enhance carbon sequestration and long-term storage of soil carbon in the Everglades. As a result, Everglades wetlands will continue to remain an overall carbon sink, drawing down and storing significant amounts of carbon to mitigate future harm.

What's Next for Resilience Research in South Florida?

By addressing degraded water quality and quantity issues, restoration is meeting one of the greatest challenges that extreme weather brings to coastal populations across the world. Recognizing the significant interconnections and dependencies between restoration and urban resilience, the Science team at The Everglades Foundation has expanded research initiatives in resilience planning for the region’s natural, built, and social systems.

This research on resilience will develop a place- and context-relevant evidence-based strategy for mitigation and transformative adaptation for South Florida’s resilience, focusing on water quality and flooding impacts. The evidence-based strategy will be founded on robust scientific research and co-produced knowledge incorporating plural values from a diverse scientific-stakeholder collaborative.

Want to learn more?

You’re in the right place. For more than 30 years, The Everglades Foundation has been the premier organization fighting to restore and protect the precious Everglades ecosystem through science, advocacy, and education.

Join the movement to restore and protect the global treasure that is America’s Everglades. Sign up to learn more. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter). Give a gift of any amount you can to support our mission at EvergladesFoundation.org/Donate.