The wetlands of the U.S. Gulf Coast provide services that are significant to the quality of life in the region, help sustain the national economy, and help protect life and property from climate extremes. Some regions of the Gulf Coast, such as the Mississippi River Delta and Florida Everglades, are experiencing some of the highest wetland loss rates in the US, largely due to modifications to regional watersheds and coastal landscapes.  Such modifications increase the vulnerability of these wetlands to future climate variability and change. Sustainable restoration of Gulf Coast wetlands requires planning for a future climate by returning critical water resources to the coastal landscapes to levels encountered when humans began modifying this region three centuries ago. Degradation of coastal wetlands through land development and water management reduces the capacity of wetlands to provide significant ecosystem services that are critical to reducing risks of living and working in coastal landscapes. For example, extensive coastal wetland landscapes, especially forested ecosystems, can reduce storm surge and wind energy during tropical storms and cyclones, minimizing hurricane damage to life and property., In part because of recent hurricanes, local, state, and federal agencies have renewed their emphasis on coastal wetland restoration in the Gulf Coast region. However, such programs may fail without effective planning for future climate change, including accelerated sea-level rise and the potential intensification and increased frequency of hurricanes. Human activities intended to reduce damage to life and property from climate extremes have unintentionally increased the vulnerability of coastal areas to climate change by altering the natural hydrologic functions of wetlands. For coastal wetlands to be sustained in a changing climate, therefore, restoration planning must account for the consequences of both climate change and human engineering of the environment.
Wetland vulnerability to climate change is based on the ability of wetland systems to cope with varying rates of environmental change. With capacity for adaptation already reduced by human activities, additional climatic changes have important implications for wetland sustainability. Many coastal restoration projects proposed for the Mississippi River delta and the Everglades are predicated on returning many ecosystem functions to natural wetlands. Modification of river management systems in both Everglades and Mississippi River is under consideration as a way to increase freshwater and sediment supply, respectively, to promote wetland development. However, wetland vulnerability to present conditions has provided the traditional context for restoration planning; this context is insufficient to assure wetland sustainability over the century-long lifetime of major restoration efforts in the face of projected sea-level rise and hurricane intensification. Forward-looking measures are required to ensure that the necessary water resources will be restored to allow wetlands to build soil sufficient to survive a changing climate. There is still time to plan and execute large-scale coastal restoration projects for the Everglades and Mississippi delta that would be sustainable against projected climate change through the twenty-first century. The long-term sustainability of coastal wetlands will have to be re-evaluated over time as coastal systems respond to restoration measures. Ultimately, sea-level rise will continue for centuries after human-induced greenhouse gases are stabilized in the atmosphere. Wetland values to society can only be secured by accounting for long-term effects of climate change in designing near-term restoration projects.