In 2026, C-HAWQ joined the Gulf Ecosystem Initiative (GEI), a $3.5 million partnership between the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and the NOAA RESTORE Science Program. Our working group is closing a gap in coastal science that has been overlooked for decades: residential canals.

Beginning in the early 20th century and accelerating after World War II, dredge-and-fill construction converted hundreds of thousands of acres of Gulf Coast wetlands into canal communities, concentrated more in Southwest Florida than anywhere else in the world. These finger-canal systems are often hydrologically disconnected. Low flushing drives nutrient buildup, low oxygen, and shifting ecosystems, yet no one has studied these canals comprehensively. The evidence exists only as scattered local case studies.

E.D.D. Dredge No. 2, Everglades Drainage District, ca. 1913. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory.

Our two-year project, running August 2026 through July 2028, closes that gap. We're reviewing the evidence base for canal-related degradation, mapping canal types across the Gulf Coast, connecting canal discharge to harmful algal blooms, and building indicators municipalities can use to plan restoration and measure whether it worked.