Resiliency Assessment of Sarasota Bay Watershed, Florida

As population in Sarasota and Manatee Counties, Florida in the United States is projected to increase, land use changes from land development happen continuously. The more land development means the more impervious surfaces and stormwater runoff to Sarasota Bay, which causes critical impact on the resiliency of the ecosystem. In order to decrease its impact on water quality and the ecosystem function of Sarasota Bay, it is important to assess the resilient status of communities that create negative impacts on the ecosystem. Three types of guiding principles of resiliency for Sarasota Bay watershed are suggested. To assess resiliency status, three indexes - vulnerability index, socio-economic index, and ecological index are developed and analyzed by using geographic information system for each census tract in the two counties. Since each indicator for vulnerability index, socio-economic index, and ecological index is measured with different metrics, statistical standardizing method - distance from the best and worst performers is used for this study to directly compare and combine them all to show total resilience score for each census tract. Also, the ten most and the ten least scores for the total resilience index scores are spatially distributed for better understanding which census tracts are most or least resilient. As Sarasota Watershed boundary is also overlaid, it is easy to understand how each census tract attains its resilience and how each census tract impacts to Sarasota Bay ecosystem. Based on results of the resiliency assessment several recommendations, guidelines, or policies for attaining or enhancing resiliency are suggested.