Environmental Impacts
The health of east Florida’s Indian River Lagoon and similar coastal waters around the globe are linked to changes in climate. Ocean-atmosphere heating and the cascading impacts that result are increasing (NOAA 2020; NASA, 2025). Diverse environmental, economic, and social resources face increasing challenges in many estuarine and ocean regions.
This resource has three sections: Environmental Impacts, Economic Impacts, and What We Can Do. The sections provide short summaries and over 90 linked references on major issues at local through connected international scales. The latest comprehensive economic analysis of the Indian River Lagoon estimates a regional value of over $28 billion (Balmoral Group, 2025) – more information on what’s at stake is in Economic Impacts.
Effects from climate change can co-vary, i.e., a physical change in one system can cause changes in other systems in variable, difficult-to-predict ways. For example, the increasing heat content in our estuarine and ocean waters has effects among all of the categories below. The impacts of climate change as well as the underlying geophysical mechanisms are well-summarized in reviews such as IPCC (2019), Dahlman and Lindsey (2020), National Climate Assessment (2023) and various sections of NASA (2025). These and over 100 citations on other pages contain decades of findings and informed recommendations to reduce impacts to our lands, waters, and communities.
Economic and Health Impacts
The coastal waters and lands of the Indian River Lagoon are a natural economic and social treasure for east Florida’s Space Coast and Treasure Coast. Beyond the costs of increasing algae blooms, fish kills, seagrass losses, and marine mammal starvation, additional economic impacts in various sectors result from an absence of adaptive planning.
What We Can Do
We can make a difference. The links below have examples of how to get involved at local, state, and national levels. The 160 mile Indian River Lagoon includes diverse resources and human communities, and is a model for understanding and adapting in other subtropical and warm temperate coastal systems of North America and beyond.
