Recent Publication Highlights the Economics of Mangrove Ecosystems

Just as salt marsh wetlands can mitigate storm damage to coastal communities in the mid-Atlantic region, so too can mangrove forests help protect coastal communities in the southeastern United States. While this fact has been widely accepted for some time, a new study led by Dr. Siddharth Narayan, an ECU faculty member at the Coastal Studies Institute, reveals just how economically crucial mangroves can be in helping to offset costs associated with large storm events in South Florida.

In a recently published report entitled “The spatially variable effects of mangroves on flood depths and losses from storm surges in Florida,” Narayan and colleagues from Moody’s RMS, the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at UC Santa Cruz, and The Nature Conservancy, used fine-scale modeling to estimate the net, location-specific benefits and trade-offs that mangroves provide. Under the right conditions, mangroves can attenuate storm surge and reduce flood depths in coastal areas. In their study, the team of researchers simulated a series of storms and subsequent economic losses across South Florida under two different scenarios- one with present-day mangrove coverage and one with no mangrove coverage at all. Their high-resolution models, which allowed them to assess the coastal floodplain at a scale of approximately 100 meters, set their research apart from past studies, which had only used larger scales ranging from one to 100 kilometers.

“In this collaboration with the risk modeling industry, we show the value of mangrove forests in reducing property damages from storm surges every year. Similar to how salt marsh wetlands from New York to North Carolina reduced damages during Hurricane Sandy, coastal properties in Florida avoided anywhere between 14 and 30% in surge losses during Hurricanes Ian and Irma due to mangroves acting as natural defenses,” says Narayan.

Through their simulations, the researchers found that the presence of mangroves has varied impacts. Mangroves seem to provide the greatest protective benefits for more frequent, moderate storms as opposed to the largest, rare storms. Additionally, areas that are landward of mangrove forests receive the most benefits, whereas areas within mangrove forests, or seaward of them, may see an increase in damage due to concentrated floodwaters redirected by the mangrove systems.

While some localized areas may experience negative impacts or simply no benefits, the broader economic impacts are net positive. For example, the models and scenarios suggest that mangroves reduce losses due to storm surge in Collier County, Florida, by $67 million per year- a benefit of nearly $270,000 per square kilometer per year. Furthermore, the models estimate that the presence of mangroves in South Florida reduced losses due to storm surge by $725 million during Hurricane Irma in 2017 and $4.1 billion during Hurricane Ian in 2022.

The results of the study further point toward the economic value of natural resources and highlight the importance of utilizing innovative, nature-based defenses in conjunction with other engineering solutions. As many communities strive to strengthen their resilience in the face of increasing coastal hazards, natural systems such as mangrove forests and salt marsh wetlands will prove to be valuable assets.

The preceding story first appeared in the Winter 2026 edition of CoastLines, published in January.