Living on the EdgeFlorida is home to “the most diverse and interesting barrier island system in the world,” writes the longtime coastal geologist Richard Davis in his book Barrier Islands of the Florida Gulf Coast. The state’s thousands of barrier islands have been vital to ecology, culture — and resilience, for as long as humans have inhabited the peninsula. Yet, they have never been quantified in a public database or ArcGIS layers—collections of geographic data that allow users to map and identify trends. UF Natural Resource Conservation senior Mariaguadalupe Vilchez used existing databases including land-use; parcel; the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s FWRI Shoreline layer; and Census Tract Data layers provided by UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research to begin building a GIS layer for inhabited barrier islands in Florida.
Florida’s major inhabited barrier islands
A look at Florida’s major inhabited barrier islands. Most are along the Gulf, though the Atlantic supports more elongated and narrower islands such as Amelia Island to the north and Miami Beach in the south. The beige areas show Census tracts that include barrier islands, and the orange circles represent barrier island cities.
Population growth and decline on Florida barrier islands, 2010-2020
Census data show that about 200 inhabited barrier islands experienced population growth or decline between 2010 and 2020. Growth is represented by orange, declines by blue. The larger the dot, the greater the population growth. The greatest growth occurred on Santa Rosa Island, with 2,477 additional permanent residents. The greatest decline occurred on Miami Beach, with 1,741 fewer permanent residents. (Births and deaths play a role, and these coastal areas may have more deaths than births, so migration over the decade may be even more significant.) Zoom in to view individual islands.