Engaging Community in Climate Change, Heritage Resource Management and Citizen Science: Examples from Florida’s National Parks

Summary

The National Park Service’s core mission is to protect and preserve unimpaired for future generations natural and cultural resources under its management. Climate change presents unprecedented challenges as humans have set in motion an unstoppable sea-level rise that will eventually submerge, damage and destroy many heritage resources. Many sites are already undergoing severe erosion, and we struggle with prioritizing limited resources for protecting sites. What are our options? Using case studies from several Florida National Park units including Canaveral National Seashore’s massive shell mounds; Everglades’ millions of acres of wetlands, subtropical estuaries and prehistoric waterways interconnecting thousands of tree islands and shell work islands; Biscayne prehistoric earth middens; and Castillo de San Marco’s fortifications, we illustrate various options for planning preservation of resources. A major success in protecting sites has been leveraging partnerships and engaging communities to participate in citizen science – enacting site protection measures, mitigation, ecosystem restoration, building living shorelines, and engaging locals of all ages in participating in heritage stewardship and resource management. These examples illustrate that despite sometimes difficult challenges, large sectors of the American public are eager, willing and ready to build a community of practice to help preserve, protect and understand threatened heritage resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22613