On July 11th, 2013, at the Inglis-Yankeetown Lion’s Club, community leaders and interested citizens gathered for a sea level rise adaptive strategies workshop led by principal investigator Dr. Kathryn Frank, project manager Michael Volk, and University of Florida graduate research assistants Sean Reiss, Rong Zeng, and Jana Rosenbloom. This is the first of two workshops that will be held during the summer of 2013 to identify potential sea level rise adaptation strategies for Yankeetown and Inglis. This first workshop included a presentation of areas in Yankeetown and Inglis that are vulnerable to sea level rise due to low elevation, and activities whereby participants noted areas of current impacts and planning priorities. Participants also formed small groups and engaged in a role-play game to identify preferred, consensus-based adaptation strategies for a hypothetical small coastal community. The project team greatly appreciated the thoughtful insights and contributions of workshop participants. The community input is actively guiding the next phase of work, which is the design of adaptive strategy options that will be presented to the public at a second local workshop in August. The presentation slides from the July workshop are available in the library page, and information about the upcoming second workshop will soon be provided on the events page.

We send two special thanks to Sondra Dame and the Inglis-Yankeetown Lion’s Club for letting us meet in their club, and to Karen Chadwick for sharing her workshop photos with us to include in this post.

Photo top: Workshop participants play the adaptive strategies game.

Photo bottom: Results of the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” (SWOT) discussion.