Category: News

The CCS is ecstatic to welcome Sharon Ryan as Associate Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives. Sharon will lead strategic planning, communications, and outreach for the Center, as well as support  its partnership and development initiatives.   Sharon is a facilitator, communicator, and strategist specializing in participatory strategic planning, action planning, stakeholder engagement, consensus building, […]

Two days after Hurricane Ian slammed into the Southwest Florida coast as a near Category 5 storm, SCCF Marine Lab Director Eric Milbrandt, Ph.D., began to mobilize a coordinated effort to assess water quality impacts.

“I reached out to our colleagues at University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions (UF-CSS) who we’ve been working with on a current harmful algae bloom research project funded by EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” said Milbrandt. “After seeing the devastation of the causeway and the islands, I knew that our routine monthly sampling from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico would not be possible with SCCF equipment.”

Even if you manage to tune out the constant media coverage of Hurricane Ian’s toll on human lives and property on Sanibel, the sensory reminders are everywhere: chainsaw whine, shattered homes, boarded stores, muck stink on the breeze.
But what about nature?

Welcome Dr. Tricia Kyzar!  Dr. Tricia Kyzar has been hanging around the Angelini lab for a few years now and officially joined the Center for Coastal Solutions in July 2022 as a Researcher and Project Manager. She earned her Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning with multiple certificates in GIS and Spatial Analysis. Tricia’s research […]

The University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions, or CCS, and the SAS Institute, a global leader in data analytics software, are joining forces to study the factors that influence water quality and the connections between water quality and economic activity in southwest Florida.

New WATERSHED series investigating water quality and marking the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act launches with an article focusing on collaborative red tide research by CCS and the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.

Coastal policy received a significant amount of attention in the Florida legislature this year, with several bills and budget items making their way to the Governor’s desk and others dying in committees. This update describes bills and projects of particular relevance to the CCS community and provides some context.

In a new study that is the first to explain what some have long suspected, researchers found that human activity helps sustain and intensify naturally occurring red tide blooms in Southwest Florida.

Join us for a CCS seminar on March 18, 3-4pm at Phelps Lab, Room 101, UF campus, followed by a mixer at First Magnitude Brewery from 5-6:30pm.   Why Experimental Ecology Matters to Conservation Biology Mark Bertness, Robert P. Brown Professor of Biology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University Mark Bertness is the […]

By Tom Ankersen, Legal Skills Professor & Legal Program Director, UF Law Students and faculty in the CCS Coastal Policy Lab (CPL) kicked off Spring Break with a field trip to Tampa Bay to get out on the water and meet the stakeholders where they work. The CPL is an experiential learning partnership between the […]

Welcome Dr. Beatriz Marin-Diaz! Dr. Beatriz Marin-Diaz joined the Center for Coastal Solutions (CCS) and Engineering School for Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment (ESSIE) as a Postdoctoral Associate in March 2022. Beatriz will be working alongside Dr. Christine Angelini and Dr. Andrew Altieri on a CCS project focused on Tyndall Airforce Base near Panama City, Florida. […]

Students of CCS-affiliated faculty presented their research at the 2022 UF Water Institute Symposium Poster Session. Topics included macroalgae decay rates, impact of sea level rise on wave loads, morphodynamics of oyster reefs, crabs as ecosystem engineers, invasive species databases, tidal flows in fjords, sturgeon conservation, invasive hog impact on salt marshes, water modeling of […]

For the 8th UF Water Institute Symposium, the CCS has organized a program of sessions and panels that explore what the future of coastal water quality monitoring, modeling, management, and policy should/could look like from a technological, scientific and engineering perspective, as well as through a management and policy lens.

As part of the Fall 2021 Coastal Policy Lab, a partnership between Florida Sea Grant, the University of Florida Conservation Clinic at the Levin College of Law and the CCS in the College of Engineering, faculty and students investigated the potential to mitigate the impacts of repetitive maintenance dredging by using more efficient channel designs.

In partnership with the Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Program (CHNEP), CCS will analyze water quality trends and develop a web-based data visualization dashboard for the CHNEP Water Atlas. The public-facing Shiny dashboard will allow users to explore water quality changes within the harbor and its watershed over time, highlighting locations where conditions have substantially […]

Hithaishi will be working alongside Dr. Maitane Olabarrieta and CCS-affiliated colleagues to understand how flow and nutrients from Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River Watershed will impact the coastal water quality and the generation of harmful algal blooms.

This project, funded through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering With Nature initiative, will advance understanding of how and why coastal landforms, including dunes, salt marshes, and oyster reefs, are evolving through innovative coastal sensing, modeling, and experimental research. A team of six Principal Investigators (PIs) from Civil and Coastal Engineering (Professor Alex Sheremet, […]

Along with Dr. David Kaplan and a team of CCS-affiliated scientists, Enrique is investigating how water and nutrients from Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River Watershed impact coastal water quality resulting in frequent harmful algal blooms.

Bills to authorize mitigation banking for seagrass and other marine resources on sovereign submerged lands (SSL) have been introduced in the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Senate for consideration in the 2022 legislative session.

We’re excited to welcome Dr. Joseph Morton to the Center for Coastal Solutions as a postdoctoral research fellow on an interdisciplinary project, funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering With Nature (EWN) initiative. Along with Center Director Christine Angelini, a team of six PIs from the departments of Civil and Coastal Engineering (CCS), […]

The inaugural semester of the CCS Coastal Policy Lab came to close in early December with a field trip to Sanibel Island to present the results of the students’ interdisciplinary projects. The Coastal Policy Lab (CPL) is a student-centered experiential learning collaboration between the University of Florida Colleges of Law and Engineering, and Florida Sea […]

CCS Associate Director Dr. David Kaplan, and a team of CCS-affiliated scientists and engineers from UF, the USF, NCSU, and the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation have received $2.3 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study how water and nutrients flowing from Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River watershed interact with tides, currents, and waves at the coast to affect coastal water quality.

Rule Development in the DEP Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection, by Matthew DePaolis, Coastal Policy Analyst Fellow, Center for Coastal Solutions / UF Law Conservation Clinic & Florida Sea Grant Legal Program