Modeling land-use change and population relocation dynamics in response to different sea level rise scenarios: Case study in Bay County, Florida

Growing rates of sea level rise (SLR) are expected to result in permanent inundation, episodic flooding, and other hazards in coastal regions, presenting an increasing threat to and high pressure on coastal ecosystems. This study presents an integrated research framework to investigate the effects of SLR on land use and explore the corresponding adaptation planning strategies on land-use change and population dynamics in coastal regions. Lands that will be permanently inundated by SLR have been identified via ArcGIS spatial analysis. A questionnaire survey has been conducted with coastal residents to examine their mobility attitudes toward flood inundation. To capture the mobility and location choice, a cellular automata (CA) model is used to simulate land-use change based on the statistical relationship between land suitability and spatial attributes via a multinomial logit model, whereas a binary logit model is used to describe the households' mobility behaviors. At a cell level (50×50 m), land-use data of Bay County, Florida, in 1995 and 2010 are used for both model calibration and validation. The model can predict 83.47% of actual residential land-use change for 2010. Under three SLR scenarios (low, medium, and high), the future land development adaptation in 2030 and 2080 are produced according to the defined transition rules. A comparison of model results in adaptation and baseline scenarios indicates that the model can efficiently predict future land-use changes, reflect the corresponding population dynamics, and prevent new land development that may be at risk from future SLR. The proposed methodology could articulate a range of adaptation and mitigation possibilities for managing coastal regions in response to future SLR, thereby offering possible responses that are applicable to a variety of regional, national, and international contexts and providing a basis from which further research, assessments, and action can arise.