Social dynamics of landscape change

Landscapes are changing rapidly in response to environmental factors and social decisions, raising uncertainty about future ecosystem service delivery. For instance, among wetlands in the northern Gulf of the US, there is little known about how the range expansion of sub-tropical, woody mangrove species into temperate grassy marshland areas will impact how residents perceive and act on their shorelines. We surveyed waterfront residents in hotspots of mangrove expansion to quantify their perceptions of the relative performance of mangroves and salt marshes to deliver ecosystem services. In our ordinal logistic regression, we found that Florida residents (where mangroves are most prevalent) and frequent recreational fishing participants exhibited stronger preference for mangroves. Unexpectedly, residents with salt marsh currently present on their shoreline also perceived that mangroves were better at delivering ecosystem services than salt marshes (Swinea et al., 2025). Considering the important role that coastal residents play in shoreline management decisions, these results demonstrate how coastal resident perceptions may drive or mediate ecological processes in ways that are not evident by examining environmental conditions alone (Alemu et al., 2025).

To help local people in the northern Gulf understand how mangrove expansion will impact their community in the future, we developed a Mangrove Explorer clearinghouse that combines ecological, social, and policy information. The website (link: https://maps.coastalresilience.org/mangrove-explorer) was built through a multi-sectoral effort with our partners in academia, the US Geological Survey, and The Nature Conservancy.