Challenges and opportunities for sustaining coastal wetlands and oyster reefs in the southeastern United States.

Formed at the confluence of marine and fresh waters, estuaries experience both the seaside pressures of rising sea levels and increasing storm severity, and watershed and precipitation changes that are shifting the quality and quantity of freshwater and sediments delivered from upstream sources. Boating, shoreline hardening, harvesting pressure, and other signatures of human activity are also increasing as populations swell in coastal regions. Given this shifting landscape of pressures, the factors most threatening to estuary health and stability are often uncertain. To identify the greatest contemporary threats to coastal wetlands and oyster reefs across the southeastern United States (Mississippi to North Carolina), we summarized recent population growth and land-cover change and surveyed estuarine management and science experts. From 1996 to 2019, human population growth in the region varied from a 17% decrease to a 171% increase (mean = +43%) with only 5 of the 72 SE US counties losing population, and nearly half growing by more than 40%. Individual counties experienced between 999 and 19,253 km

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