Sea level rise scenarios for the Cape Sable seaside sparrow

The endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow (Ammospiza maritima mirabilis; CSSS) occurs in marl prairie habitat at the southern end of the Everglades, at the southernmost part of the Florida peninsula. The locations of three of its six subpopulations are proximate to the coast, putting them at risk for inundation caused by sea level rise (SLR). The spatially explicit predictive model EverSparrow provides probability of CSSS presence estimates based on hydrology, fire history, and vegetation. We developed two hydrologic scenarios of SLR using projections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and University of Florida's GeoPlan Center, using a modeled restoration scenario of the current landscape-scale water operations affecting CSSS habitat as the baseline. We then ran EverSparrow with the baseline and two SLR projections and examined the probability of CSSS presence within the three coastal subpopulations.