Summary

Red tide events are a recurring natural phenomenon along Florida’s coastline. While still not yet fully understood, the initiation, progress, termination, and ecosystem effects of red tide events have been observed and studied for decades. More recently, red tide events have been shown to influence human activity, resulting in significant impacts to human health and wellbeing, tourism, and other socioeconomic domains. The scope and severity of these impacts to human activity in a given region are dependent on the level of exposure to the red tide event, the existence of and dependence on the human activities that are impacted by red tide events in a region. While all of these findings contribute to a more complete understanding of the broad socioeconomic impacts that can result from red tide events, they are often distinct measurements of the impacts to specific human activities from individual red tide events and do not yet provide a framework for consistent, comparable measurements of impacts across years nor do they provide an assessment of vulnerability to the socioeconomic impacts of future red tide events. 

In this context, the phrase vulnerability to the socioeconomic impacts of red tide events refers to the degree to which a region is susceptible to and is unable to cope with the adverse effects of red tide on social and economic systems. This project leveraged results from academic literature as well as resources and information from ongoing, complementary research efforts underway at the University of Florida (UF) and Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) funded by the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS), to create a Composite Red Tide Vulnerability Index (CRTVI) to quantify the vulnerability of coastal counties in Florida to the socioeconomic impacts of red tide events. The CRTVI can increase general awareness of a county’s vulnerability to the socioeconomic impacts of red tide events and can be used as an objective criterion to help decision-makers both identify areas that are more vulnerable to the socioeconomic impacts stemming from red tide events and design systems to better prepare for, respond to, and mitigate red tide event impacts in the future. As a composite index, the CRTVI communicates the overall county-level vulnerability as well as provides insights on a county’s vulnerability across the specific domains (red tide exposure, human health, fisheries and marine activity, tourism and recreation, and socioeconomic vulnerability). The composite nature of the CRTVI ensures that it will be useful to a wide range of potential audiences including local- and state-level policymakers, tourism development agencies, private industry, environmental agencies, and the general public.

The quantification of vulnerability of coastal regions in Florida to the impacts of red tide events can inform decision-making processes related to preparing for, mitigating, or preventing the negative impacts of red tide events. A deeper understanding of vulnerability to the socioeconomic impacts of red tide events is especially important as continued population growth and coastal development increases the size of potentially affected human populations and the scope of the negative socioeconomic effects resulting from red tide events. In addition, climate change can affect the distribution of suitable living areas for Karenia brevis populations and nutrient enrichment related to human activity has been shown to be a driver of increased intensity and duration of red tide events in Florida, so the location, intensity, and duration of red tide events could change in the future.

Downloads 

Coming Soon!