"People of the Apalachicola System:" Assessing Risk and Value through Integrated Cultural Heritage Management Prioritization Frameworks

The Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve (ANERR) represents one of the most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes along Florida’s Gulf Coast. The “People of the Apalachicola System” project, funded by a 2023 National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative Catalyst Grant, incorporated technical and collaborative methodologies to examine cultural heritage under threat from climate and human pressures. Archival research, archaeological monitoring, and high-accuracy shoreline mapping revealed that many sites included in the project are already experiencing erosional degradation, with predictive modeling indicating that nearly all project sites will be destroyed by 2100. Community conversations and surveys highlighted that residents place the highest value on burial grounds, Indigenous and African American heritage sites, and living traditions such as shellfish harvesting and fishing. Together, these findings underscore the need for dual prioritization frameworks that balance technical assessments of environmental risk with ethnographic and participatory insights into heritage value. This article provides an overview of the project’s results, demonstrating how the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches yields management strategies that are both evidence-based and grounded within the community. Integrated approaches like these can provide significant benefits for both cultural resource management and broader coastal resiliency planning.