Forested Wetlands Project

Rejuvenating coastal forests for climate and flood resilience while building new economic opportunities for local communities

For most of us, the word wetland conjures a marshy expanse of shallow ponds, stiff grasses, and soft boggy earth. But dramatically different ecosystems once lined many waterways and low-lying areas of the Gulf Coast of the United States. The key difference: these areas were dominated by large old trees. In a few remnants of these old-growth forests, towering cypress and tupelo trees rise from broad buttresses, which disappear into placid water. Mosses and orchids adorn the trees, fish nurseries hide among the roots, and a fabulous diversity of birdlife flits among the branches overhead. In other remnants, known as bottomland hardwood forests, water hickory and overcup oak harbor concentrations of distinctive and endangered biodiversity. Most of us don’t have this picture of wetlands simply because there are few such forests left.

These forested wetlands offer extraordinary benefits. They store tremendous quantities of carbon, reduce the severity of storm surges, and facilitate the recharge of fresh groundwater. Yet those few forested wetlands that remain are in rapid retreat. Over the past few decades, thousands of square kilometers have been lost. Their staggeringly swift disappearance is due in part to conversion in land-use, and in part to climate change, which drives sea level rise, resulting in salt-water intrusion that transforms ecologically rich stands of trees into what are known as ghost forests—graveyards of leafless, blanched trunks.

For the global community, this decline means a surge of greenhouse gases and the loss of a singular and magnificent ecosystem. For local communities, there are additional consequences. People that have relied on forested wetlands for hunting and fishing have lost a vital source of food as well as spiritual sustenance. Less obviously, communities in large coastal cities become more vulnerable to flooding, because waters that would have been absorbed by intact forest are instead released directly to rising rivers and expanding floodplains.

CE’s Forested Wetlands Project grew out of CE’s Coastal Forested Wetlands (CFW) Lab. Under the leadership of Elliott White Jr.—an environmental scientist at Stanford University, one of the world’s leading experts on CFW ecology, and a native of coastal Louisiana—the CFW Lab brought together experts in wetland ecology, satellite imagery processing and analysis, and machine learning. The lab built a predictive machine learning model that identified areas of potential habitat for water forests. Critically, their model incorporated projections of future climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, and sea-level rise, so it is capable of identifying not just locations that are presently suitable for water forests, but those areas that are likely to be suitable under probable climate-change scenarios.

Starting with the CFW Lab’s present-and-future habitat maps, the Forested Wetlands team overlayed additional hydrological and socio-economic data. This layering enabled the team to identify areas of potential water forest that would be most likely to provide flood mitigation to local or downstream communities that are especially socio-economically vulnerable. The addition of socio-economic data also allowed the team to identify places where underserved communities could benefit from the potential of their land to generate significant revenue on emerging markets in ecosystem services. In short, the team has identified locations for water forest regeneration that are not only ecologically viable, but also socially impactful. The intersection of those two categories yields our highest-priority set of targets for socio-ecological regeneration.

We are now working with individuals and communities who are land stewards in these highest-priority locations. Our engagement has multiple interrelated stages and goals, including:
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1. Communicating to land stewards the extraordinary potential of their land to provide ecosystem benefits at scales ranging from their own property to downstream high-density areas to the global atmosphere
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2. Coordinating neighbors to organize larger continuous areas for reforestation efforts
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3. Educating land stewards in potential streams of financial support for restoration efforts that provide ecosystem benefits, including flood mitigation and carbon sequestration
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4. Connecting land stewards with potential key partners, including trustworthy carbon project developers
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5. Maintaining ongoing communication with and advocacy for land stewards, guarding against the informational and financial asymmetry that has, in some rural communities, resulted in inequitable outcomes of carbon development projects

By combining the leading-edge research and technology of CE’s CFW Lab, culturally appropriate and locally adapted community organizing, and strong connections in the ecosystem service development and financing world, we are advancing ecological and socio-economic regeneration in the Southeastern United States.