Vulnerability Assessment of Mangrove forests Regions of the Americas
NASA's Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program approved "Vulnerability Assessment of Mangrove forests Regions of the Americas," a proposal submitted by Marc Simard, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Victor Rivera-Monroy, Temilola E. Fatoyinbo, and Edward Castañeda-Moya.

The project will evaluate the distribution, status, and trends of mangrove forests in the tropical Americas (North, Central, South). The main objectives are (1) the production of 3D maps of mangrove forest structure and ecogeomorphology using multi-sensor data fusion (optical, radar, lidar), (2) the production of maps of proximal drivers of changes in mangrove forests, and (3) production of models of human and climate change drivers that are potentially adaptable to other areas and applicable to policy.

The selected regional and local validation sites of the project includes the Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) region which encompass the largest mangrove area in the continental USA. The project will complement the current work performed by FCE-LTER researchers who are assessing how both mangrove forests growth and development are influenced by the impacts and legacies of hurricanes, sea level rise, and human impacts along coastal areas. The results from this study will facilitate valuable synergies to the ongoing FCE modeling synthesis and modeling efforts, as well as provide a valuable comparative framework at the continental scale.
(September 26, 2011)

Seagrass meadows promoted as carbon sink
Jim Fourqurean's FCE LTER research on blue carbon in Shark Bay, Western Australia is highlighted on Yahoo!7 News.
(August 23, 2011)

Adam Rosenblatt's and Mike Heithaus' FCE LTER research ("Alligator Commuters: Gators' Travels Link Freshwater and Marine Ecosystems") is highlighted on the NSF Discoveries page.
(June 24, 2011)

FCE Hosts the ESA SEEDS Field Trip to the Everglades
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) has a program called "SEEDS" which stands for "Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability: Diverse People for a Diverse Science." The SEEDS program provides mentorship and field experience to college students as a way of promoting diversity within the biological sciences. Every summer the National Science Foundation provides funding to ESA for a fieldtrip to bring the SEEDS participants to a different LTER site. This year, FCE hosted the SEEDS field trip and 25 students from around the country came to the Everglades. While here, they visited Everglades National Park, the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation, the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, discussed FCE research with project collaborators and graduate students, and participated in a career panel at Florida International University.
(May 24, 2011)