Coastal resilienceFIU launches Sea Level Solutions Center

FIU display in Sea Level Rise Solutions Center // Source: fiu.edu

With rising seas threatening coastal communities all across the world, Florida International University (FIU) has launched the Sea Level Solutions Center to help people understand, adapt and persevere. FIU ecologist Tiffany Troxler will serve as director.

FIU says that the center combines expertise in the natural, physical, and social sciences, along with architecture, engineering, computer sciences, law, communications, business, health, and tourism management to develop long-term strategies in the face of rising seas, noting that FIU’s Miami location will be key in advancing the center’s mission. South Florida is particularly vulnerable because of the large number of assets exposed to the effects of sea level rise.

“Rising seas are a topic of grave concern around the world, and most societies will feel the effects,” said FIU president Mark B. Rosenberg. “While successful adaptation to sea level rise is local in nature, it will take international, national, regional, as well as local cooperation to develop and implement the necessary policies and strategies to address this global threat.”

The FIU Sea Level Solutions Center will focus on envisioning and designing safe, resilient, prosperous, and sustainable coastal communities by focusing on the science behind the rising seas, preservation of governance systems, infrastructure challenges and solutions, business impacts, supply chain challenges, ecosystem dependencies, and personal assets. It will work with local governments, business, and community leaders to accelerate adaption planning.

The center will support efforts to finance and implement plans through local, state, and federal funding sources while drawing on collaborations with governments and the private sector, leveraging existing partnerships and creating new ones. The center is also be dedicated to training a new generation of scientists, planners, designers, engineers, architects, and communicators to develop sustainable solutions to this and other climate change impacts.

“Through its support for the Sea Level Solutions Center, Florida is poised to tackle challenges and advance opportunities brought forward by rising sea level,” Troxler said. “Collaborative efforts fostered by the center will advance science-based actions to mitigate rising concentrations of greenhouse gases and discover transdisciplinary sea level rise adaptation solutions to serve regional, national and global communities.”

FIU nites that it has been leading initiatives in South Florida to advance the science of sea level rise, including fostering strong partnerships with municipalities and other stakeholders to develop and implement mitigation and adaptation plans. The Sea Level Solutions Center will bring these multi-disciplinary efforts together in ways which will foster creative solutions to the complex issues of climate change through collaborative research, education, public outreach, and engagement. Key partners in all of these activities will include researchers from other universities, the Florida Climate Institute, scientists, practitioners, business leaders, community leaders, and the general public.

Troxler’s experience is relevant to her new position as the new center’s director. She is a research scientist with FIU’s Southeast Environmental Research Center and Department of Biological Sciences. Her research focuses on informing management and restoration of coastal and freshwater wetland ecosystems. Some of the projects she leads include collaborative efforts that examine the effects of salinity inundation on soil carbon balance in Everglades coastal wetlands. She is a national greenhouse gas inventories review expert for the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry sector. Troxler is project collaborator and working group co-lead in the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER program.