Abstract
The Florida 2045 Strategic Plan establishes long-term goals that facilitate prioritizing resources within The Nature Conservancy. The plan aims to address the biggest threats by emphasizing projects that have the greatest combined value and likelihood of success. This internship report focuses on populating an evidence base for two of the plan’s six transformational initiatives: Using Nature to Restore Florida’s Sense of Community and Florida’s Coasts of the Future. The evidence base was populated with a variety of primary and secondary resources that address current research and assumptions, contradictory evidence, and other relevant materials. High-priority science gaps were identified within the initiatives where future monitoring may be needed or action cannot be taken yet due to lack of support from the literature and real-world experiences. Suggestions were made for needed research, models, and monitoring. A brief set of recommendations was provided based on the evidence collected. This work will be used to guide the Florida chapter of The Nature Conservancy in strategic planning for these two initiatives. The tutorial created for populating the evidence base can guide efforts for the remaining four initiatives in the project.