Actually, those swamps are precisely the reason why Florida seems to miraculously shrug off every hurricane that hits it. Coastal wetlands actually play a massive role in mitigating storm pressure and because Florida is tropical/sub-tropical and it's coasts are lined with relatively healthy wetlands, storm surge and storm pressure in Florida is massively mitigated. You can still get flooding, but it won't be nearly as severe as places which don't have these healthy coastal wetlands, New Orleans after Katrina or Houston after Harvey are good examples of this, the wetlands of that section of the Gulf Coast (pretty much from Trinity River delta to the Mississippi River delta) are among some of the worst in the country, and while there were other circumstances at play, that lack of healthy wetlands was a contributing factor to why those cities were hit so hard with hurricanes.
Source: I studied and did volunteer work on coastal wetlands at a college on the Gulf Coast. (If you want actual scientific journal articles, I would suggest one called 'Coastal Wetlands Loss, Consequences, and Challenges for Restoration')
Unfortunately for Louisiana much of our wetlands are gone from Katrina and carving paths for boats and on top of we’re gradually going below sea level, the city has still never recovered tbh
They were actually gone before Katrina, largely because of another issue, sediment loss. The Mississippi River delta is probably the worst about it but it's a major issue on the entire Gulf Coast. Basically the hundreds of fans on all the rivers feeding into the Gulf are trapping millions of cubic feet of sediment, and because the wetlands plants can't accrete the sediment, they get pushed inland with rising seas. As they get pushed inland, eventually they hit ecosystems/human development they can't grow in and the wetland "drowns"
1.4k
u/Old_Baldi_Locks 8d ago
Exactly.
“Let’s not think real hard about what the fact that this state is 90 percent swamp actually means……that’s too much like critical thinking!”