About

Florida Sea Grant is funding an interdisciplinary team of University of Florida researchers to study potential impacts of future coastal change in Levy County, Florida, and to work with local leaders and citizens to identify possible strategies for adaptation. The two-year project ran from February 2012 to October 2014. Major activities of the project include: technical analyses of coastal change, including future sea level rise scenarios and impacts; public engagement through kids’  summer camp activities, city and county commission presentations, community and regional workshops, festivals, an artists’ show, oral histories, and this website; and design of promising adaptation strategies for the built and natural environments.

It is hoped that the Levy County project will provide lessons about planning for coastal change that can used by other coastal communities, especially in the Big Bend region of the Florida Gulf Coast. 

The project brief linked below provides additional information:

Levy County Coastal Change Brief

 

 

 

The project team includes faculty, instructors, and students from the College of Design, Construction and Planning.

Project Leaders

Prof. Kathryn Frank, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning (Principal Investigator)

Prof. Dawn Jourdan, Urban and Regional Planning, and Law (Co-PI, now at the University of Oklahoma)

Spring 2012 Studio: Project Kick-off

Led by Prof. Ferdinand Lewis, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning

Brian Biada

Christian D’Alessandro

Ashley McGehee

Jennifer Rhodes

Jana Rosenbloom

Kevin Szatmary

Chern-Huan Tsai

Yehan Xu

Summer 2012: Cedar Key Summer Youth Program

Led by Prof. Dawn Jourdan, Prof. Kathryn Frank, and Sean Reiss, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Reba Abraham

Gail Easley

Forrest Eddleton

Matthew Janicki

Paulette McFadden

Ashley McGehee

Fall 2012 Studio: Community Outreach

Led by Instructor Gail Easley, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Alex Ahrenholz

Kevin Bennett

Juan Castillo

Caitlin Cerame

Kenwyn Harrilal

Douglas McDuffie

Caitlin Murphy

Sean Reiss

Kevin Szatmary

Arianna Tehrani

Stephanie Zarkis

Spring 2013 Studio: Adaptive Design in Cedar Key-Rosewood, and Oral Histories

Led by Prof. Joseli Macedo, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Barbara (Rain) Araneda

Kevin Bennett

Mario Duron

Maria Gavidia

Sean Reiss

Valerie Voigt

Karlin Warkentin

Rong Zeng

Summer 2013: Adaptive Design in Yankeetown-Inglis, and Oral Histories

Led by Michael Volk, Center for Landscape Conservation Planning

Sean Reiss

Jana Rosenbloom

Zachary Wignall

Rong Zeng

Kevin Bennett

Master’s Theses

Forrest Eddleton, “Communication of past adaptation: using local history in rural planning for sea level rise”, Urban and Regional Planning, 2012

Sean Reiss, “Using the landscape to identify tipping points and thresholds to assess vulnerability to sea level rise for informing adaptation planning in Levy County, Florida,” Urban and Regional Planning, 2014

Rong Zeng, “Integrated natural and built environment strategies for adapting to sea level rise,” Urban and Regional Planning, 2014

Yehan Xu, “Adaptation strategies for sea level rise: Case studies and application to coastal town of Cedar Key, Florida”, Urban and Regional Planning, 2014

Associate Researchers

Zhong-Ren Peng, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Paul Zwick, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Gail Easley, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Robert Grist, Dept. of Landscape Architecture

Esther Obonyo, Rinker School of Building Construction

Robert Ries, Rinker School of Building Construction

Thomas Ruppert, Florida Sea Grant

Seahorse Key near Cedar Key