Hi, you're listening to Cultivate Curiosity, a.
Podcast that inspires the next generation to stay curious. Cultivate Curiosity is brought to you by the Emerald Coast Science Center, a nonprofit.
Interactive science museum and STEAM educational facility in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
This podcast is perfect for anyone curious about the world we live in, because you never know what we'll talk about next. Hi, I'm Diane, and today we're here with Meenakshi Chaba, the ecosystem and resilience scientist with the Everglades Foundation. And we're so excited to have the Everglades foundation with us again because the Everglades is such a huge, important part of our state, such a unique ecosystem, there's no place else in the world like it, and it's really, really important for us to pay attention to what's happening down there right now. So, as the Everglades Foundation's ecosystem and resilience scientists, Meenakshi merges advanced knowledge of Everglades ecosystem science, ecosystem services valuation, and resilience planning for the natural and built environment in South Florida. She applies the knowledge to tracking and understanding how decision making, focused planning on the Everglades and our communities affects ecological and economic outcomes across the ecosystem. Prior to joining the foundation, she was a research analyst with the USAID funded Disaster Risk and Resilience in the American Program at Florida International University's Extreme Events Institute, where she performed economic evaluations of approximately 20 USAID risk reduction projects and was the program's lead science writer. Her research has contributed to the fields of economic decision making and risk management, valuation of ecosystem services in policymaking, and on the inclusion of sustainability, economic efficiency and social equity in resilience planning for climate change. Menashke has also taught biology and ecology at the undergraduate and high school levels. She earned her PhD in earth systems science from FIU and a master's degree in environmental studies from FIU and a master's in Zoology from the University of Delhi. And we are so excited to have you with us this morning.
Thank you so much for having me at the Cultivate Curiosity podcast. I love the name because it is so intriguing and helps one understand what this would be about. And so thank you, J.C. and thank you, Dan, for having me on this podcast.
Well, our goal is just to make people think and allow them to find wonder in the world around us. You know, we feel very strongly that if you find wonder and you have a moment of awe, that actually brings you joy and. And it makes your whole entire day just a little bit brighter. And that's what we kind of hope to do with all of the work that we do here, but especially in our podcast. So we'll delve right into some of the questions that we had shared with you so that we can learn a little more about the work you do and the importance of it to not just the health, well, I guess basically to the health of our planet. Because, you know, if we can save and protect an ecosystem like this, it's a huge, huge project. So what led you to pursue a career as an ecosystem and resilience scientist? And what drew you specifically to Florida's unique ecosystems?
Yeah, well, you said it right, you know, that this awe and wonder we have for nature, I think I had that too while I was growing up. And I was keenly interested, like how every part of the environment, whether plant, animal or soil, you know, air, they all performed a certain role to create our synchronous, beautiful natural world. And so, without surprise, I began my career in the biological sciences. But I soon became really concerned about the growing environmental impacts that we were creating by our action. You know, the air and water pollution that was affecting not only people's health, but that of our environment, and in particular, carbon pollution that was making our globe hotter. I realized that the problem of climate change was becoming the defining problem of our time. And as a society, we were not, I felt, valuing our ecosystems sufficiently, we were continually degrading them, when in fact they were critical and key part of the solution in solving climate change. So it was at this time that I began my second master's degree in environmental science at fiu, that is Florida International University. You've already mentioned a lot in my bio. So I was living in South Florida at that time, and the Everglades mangroves, they drew my attention immediately. Now, this is the largest mangrove forest in the continent, under protected area in the Everglades national park, one of the rare mangrove forests in the world where deforestation does not take place. They are resilient, awe inspiring ecosystems. They live on the coast, like right at the confluence of land and sea, but they live in saline waters, which is a very stressful condition for most plants. And yet they are ecosystems that provide us with many benefits. So with respect to climate change, we were understanding how they serve as blue carbon systems, drawing down significant amounts of carbon from the air and helping to balance and lower the planetary heat. So I spend a long time studying these Everglades mangroves. And along with my advisor, Dr. Mahadev Path, who's a highly accomplished environmental economist, we published a study together that put A value to the carbon stored in these Everglades mangrove forests. We published that this value is about 2 to $3.4 billion. So very valuable to humanity. I then went on to work in the field of disaster resilience at the Extreme events institute with Dr. Sarmiento, who's a notable disaster scientist and practitioner. So we, what we were doing over there was working in the field of disaster risk reduction in cities throughout the Americas, finding solutions that help reduce the impacts of disasters in communities. But I in particular was interested in using nature as a disaster risk reduction tool. I also finished my doctoral dissertation with Dr. Bhatt at FIU at the same time, and this was on the topic of sustainable and equitable solutions for urban resilience. So when I joined the Everglades foundation as ecosystem and resilience scientist, I have since then been working to quantify and value the various benefits that the Everglades provides to give us a high quality of life, like giving us the access to clean drinking water to about 6 million people here in Southeast Florida, along with clean air, protecting us in several ways, and researching on how the Everglades restoration is key to building resilience in South Florida. I work with an exciting and accomplished team of scientists led by Dr. Steve Davis, and collaborate with many other experts in the field to design solutions to reduce risks in our cities to make us more resilient against climate change, while always prioritizing nature and people.
I've traveled down to the Keys a couple of times and been in the Miami area as well. And I just think looking at the mangroves and the root structure and how it stabilizes the shorelines and how it provides, like a hiding place for a lot of different fish and species along those lines, like a little. A place to just kind of, you know, check out for a little while.
Absolutely.
And it's. It's just absolutely gorgeous. So the mangrove forests are often called the unsung heroes of the coastline. Thanks. So can you explain a little bit about how they protect our communities, especially during, like, major hurricanes and storms that unfortunately, we continue to see more of and coming in much stronger?
Absolutely. And you're right, they're unsung heroes because they serve us in so many different ways, but they don't get the attention they deserve. Now, you mentioned storms. Like, during storms, what happens is, and just as it happened, like in Hurricane Irma in 2017, there are high winds that push the ocean water to an abnormal height. And this water is pushed onto the coast. This high water is called storm surf, surge. And as it pushes onto the shore, it causes homes and properties to flood, causing loss and destruction. And in the last decade, as you just mentioned, we are seeing increased frequency and intensity of storms along the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Just last year, if you remember, we had hurricanes Helene and Milton as well. They struck us back to back and cost billions of dollars to the communities here and elsewhere. So the mangroves, again as you mentioned, their complicated structure, their roots, stems and canopies are a unique structure. What they do is when you have a thick belt of mangroves along the coastline, they act as a semi permeable barrier against the storm surge. The mangroves absorb the energy of the surge and they slow down the water and divert it. So what happens is the surge water as it passes the mangrove belt is much lower in height than the surge level in front at the ocean side. So if you have homes behind the mangroves, they are either spared the flooding from a storm surge or experience much lower impacts of flooding. Thus they form a frontline community acting as buffers against these hurricane force winds. Unfortunately, we didn't have this insight into the productive benefits of mangroves before. So when we were building cities, what we did was indiscriminately cut down mangrove forests. Obviously because we were valuing the view of open waters and beaches more than mangroves. That's what we did. For example, in Miami beach, which was full of mangroves, by the early 1900s, developers had come and stripped this island and many other islands bare into beaten concrete islands, cities that we have today. But during Hurricane Irma, coming back to that, this 550 square miles of mangrove forest that covers South Florida, it acted as a formidable protective infrastructure and bore the brunt of that storm. In recently, a study by Dr. Siddharth Narayan and his colleagues has modeled how those mangrove forests benefited us during Horma, they found that the mangroves protected more than 600,000 people from flooding, averting $1.5 billion in surge related damages across Florida, not just in Collier and Lee counties, but in Miami Dade counties and other counties as well. And so mangroves continuously and regularly reduce our damages from flooding and really are, as you said, the unsung heroes of coastal communities all over the world.
So we don't have mangrove forests like that up here in the panhandle area. And I know that that part of it I think is it's a difference in temperature, right? Because we get in the wintertime we do get a little bit colder than you guys do in the southern part of the state. And so we don't have that same protection, especially not along our coastlines. Now, I have seen some more in the brackish water on the. On the inland area a bit, but not actually on the coast of the Gulf itself. So how do you guys preserve and protect them? I mean, it sounds like these mangroves have taken a beating for us as protecting us. And how resilient are they themselves? And what is it that y' all do in order to be able to restore and preserve them after storms have gone through, to manage the health of them as we continue to, you know, be who we are in those environments?
Yes, yes. So, of course, at the Panhandle, you are right at the edge of mangrove habitability. So that's why you don't see mangroves over there. I think you should be at about 30 degrees north latitude there. They're at that edge. So we have these subtropical mangroves in South Florida. So we are very fortunate, of course. And yes, they take a beating during storms. And in fact, they have been under stress for a long time because of how we drained South Florida and the Everglades. That is, we drained these wetlands for agriculture and urban development so that we have very reduced freshwater flows coming into the coastal ecosystems. Now, this has been 150 years of drainage. And the impact of it is that these coastal ecosystems, like mangroves, they are under stress because of the less water, because they need that fresh water flow to remain healthy and to retain their structure as well as function. This continual stress is affecting them, of course, and their resilience. But they have been very resilient, I must say. But it has been necessary to restore the entire ecosystems and mangroves as well. So the foundation has been working for more than 30 years to restore and protect the Everglades along with this mangrove forest. Through science, policy, and education, we've been a lead environmental organization, bringing several stakeholders together to support the federal state partnership of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. You can imagine this plan as this large scale, very unique, and one of the largest restoration plans in the world that is implementing more than 60 individual infrastructure projects to make sure we have a restored freshwater flow in the Everglades so that ecosystems like the mangroves can be healthy again. So we don't plant the forests if they are in, especially in the protected areas. We don't plant mangroves if they're destroyed by a hurricane, but they rejuvenate themselves back again, either naturally. And assisted by the additional water from restoration. The Everglades foundation has been toiling very hard to ensure that Restoration is completed well in time, in this decade. So we can and save these critical ecosystems and continue to protect them into the future so that our future generations and we ourselves can remain resilient into the future. So, you know, not only the foundation by supporting the Everglades Restoration plan, are we saving and, you know, protecting our mangrove ecosystems. Our science team members too, they contribute regularly to scientific studies that advance our knowledge on these coastal ecosystems, including mangroves. And they provide the guidance to restoration and operations planning so that, you know, these projects can provide us the maximum benefits possible. In fact, we also partner with many other research entities like Florida International University, the NASA's Blue Flux mission and Windrock International to advance research on mangroves.
So I am listening to Jane Goodall's book on hope right now and I'm about halfway through it, you know, talking about climate change and how she finds hope in, you know, what sometimes stories that could sort of bring us down. And then I also have John Green's new book, the Age of the Anthropocene or. Yeah, and I'm not sure if that's gonna make me feel good or not. So I'm considering just pausing my Jane Goodall listening and listening to that book and then going back and finishing Jane Goodall. So that way I, on a happy note, when we're talking about, you know, man impacting our environment and you know, the way that, the way that we are actively changing the world and not for the better, Right. And I think one of the things that she talks about in that book is our shortsightedness and how we don't have a lot of long term thinkers. And it sounds like you guys are planning long term projects, projects that are going to create that system that can naturally, hopefully care for its itself. But right now it can't because we've wrecked it. So let's end this with a hopeful note because I am so blown away by what you've been telling me and by the number of people that are invested in protecting this. And I'm hoping that you do get a lot of support from the state as well in order to recreate this incredibly unique place that only Florida has. And every single Floridian should be like, yes, this is important to us. This is what makes us Florida, right? That wild Florida. And it's also part of the reason why all these people want to come here. But we need to be more long term thinking and think about people come here because of places like the Everglades. And if we just, you know, slash and burn and cut and pave, all of that disappears and all of the reasons for why people think this is such a unique place disappear too. You know. So I just what are your call to actions for Floridians to help us protect the Everglades?
Absolutely. You nailed it when you said that this restoration is a really unique, ambitious land with huge foresight. It began by not only aiming to achieve ecological restoration, but we've soon realized that it is producing resilience in our urban communities as well. It is achieving resilience into the climate change impacts and the future that we need to address those impacts in our cities. So the most important action I would like your listeners to take is to learn about the Everglades, the benefits it provides us, how it's improving our lives and resilience in our communities. If you haven't visited the Everglades already and you don't know how special this wetland is, come down and view it for yourself. And also know that if you live in South Florida, the source of your drinking water is likely the Everglades. So follow us and the Everglades foundation on social media, on Instagram or Facebook to help you get easy access to these learning resources. But if you live in a coastal community, you also know that there are plans for resilience in the face of sea level rise and extreme heat. At the foundation, our work extends to resilience planning in cities as well as where we want to protect our water supplies, reduce flood risk and extreme heat impacts, and improve the quality of water. We think that it is through nature based solutions instead of seawalls and storm gates alone that we will be able to create resilience in our cities. We need to bring those Everglades ecosystems within our cities to get all the benefits of beauty protection, coastal resilience. Go on and support nature based solutions and living shorelines, more mangroves and coral reefs on your shorelines so we can create a livable, thriving and resilient future for ourselves.
Oh thank you so much. You did end us on a hopeful note and we appreciate you taking the time this morning to talk to us. And we are definitely going to make available all of your social media platforms so that our listeners can find out more about the Everglades and how important it is to all Floridians, not just those that live in the non Panhandle area.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cultivate Curiosity.
If you have any questions, feel free to email us@social mediacscience.org Tune in for our next episode in two weeks.