Mangroves significantly reduce annual and catastrophic damages from storms and are a strong first line of defense for coastal communities, according to a new study from researchers at UC Santa Cruz, the Nature Conservancy, and RMS. The study brought together a team of scientists from the engineering, insurance, and conservation sectors to quantify the effectiveness of mangroves in reducing flood risk to people and property.
Their report, Valuing The Flood Risk Reduction Benefits of Florida’s Mangroves, concludes that mangroves in Florida prevented $1.5 billion in direct flood damages and protected over half a million people during Hurricane Irma in 2017, reducing damages by nearly 25% in counties with mangroves. With coastal challenges created by growing populations, burgeoning development, and climate change, risks to people and property from flooding and storm surge are on the rise. Mangroves provide valuable flood protection and risk reduction benefits to these coastal areas, yet they are a threatened species.
This work helps to identify where to invest cost effectively in habitat restoration and conservation, which is critical for building coastal resilience, said project team leader Michael Beck, research professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
The study used the risk insurance industry’s latest and most rigorous high-resolution flood and loss catastrophe models and an extensive database of property exposure to estimate property damages from storms with and without mangroves in Florida. The report shows that mangroves significantly reduce flood levels during a catastrophic event such as Hurricane Irma.
The report goes further to show the annual benefits from mangroves across many storms. In Collier County, the team analyzed flood damages for 100 storms and found that annual flood damages would increase by 25% should the county suffer the loss of its mangrove forests.
2019 REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA