Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Kelsea Best and co-authors published “Demographics and risk of isolation due to sea level rise in the United States” in Nature Communications.

The paper shows the risk of isolation due to sea levels rising is expected to disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic populations, older adults, and renters.

The timing of these disproportionate burdens, however, depends heavily on future warming and SLR projections. The difference between an intermediate and high SLR scenario occurs multiple decades before Black and Hispanic populations are susceptible to overrepresentation in the population at risk of isolation when looking at the most aggregated level. This difference in timing reinforces the importance of mitigation to limit the degree of warming at a global scale in order to minimize the burdens of SLR on disadvantaged populations. However, the timing of risk of isolation on disadvantaged populations will vary at a very localized level, with some communities experiencing this risk significantly earlier than others.

Read more at Nature Communications