Florida reefs offer multimillion-dollar flood protection—if they survive
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"We'd love to restore and enhance and make the reefs even better, but this is just saying 'my gosh, let's protect what we have,'" said Curt Storlazzi, a research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and lead author of the study, which is published in the journal Earth's Future.
As coral reefs break down, they get shorter and flatter, leaving less friction to slow incoming waves. Bigger waves can reach further inland, swamping more homes and businesses. A 2017 study by one of the co-authors of the paper, Kimberly Yates, found that reefs in the Florida Keys had already lost nearly three feet of height in the last few decades alone.
For this new study, a group of federal scientists ran an analysis comparing how much flooding South Florida's coast would see today in a hurricane versus after a century of eroding reefs.
The result: about $438 million in extra economic damages every year with no reefs for protection.
The study also zoomed in on Bal Harbour in particular, as an example of community where losing reef protection could lead to a hefty additional dose of flooding. "That shows how it's punching further inland," Storlazzi said.
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