Outside the Flamingo Center Visitor Center, picnic tables sit along a grassy strip next to the water. An angled sign looks out over the water. A nearby piling has colored markers showing sea levels.
The sign's title appears over a view of a family with bicycles and a fishing pole on a beach, three inset maps, and an illustration of the measuring pole.
Sign Text in English and Spanish:
"The Flamingo area offers lots of recreation choices. Why are you here? Maybe to watch the bountiful wildlife — sea turtles, crocodiles, and Caribbean birds. Maybe to play in the sub-tropical landscape. Are you boating? Camping?
Sea level rise threatens all of this. Earth's warming temperatures, mostly caused by human actions like burning fossil fuels, melt glaciers and make ocean water expand. Will the sea engulf this special place? Where will the plants and wildlife go? Where will you go?"
Along the bottom left of the sign, three inset maps show the same aerial view as sea level rises. The perspective is like a birds-eye view up over the ocean, looking down on Flamingo and inland. An arrow points to Flamingo in the front of the image on the coast: You Are Here. The nearby land shows the main park road coming in, Bear Lake, and Coot Bay. Whitewater Bay is in the distance, near the horizon.
In the first photo with a blue zero marker, land is about 60 percent of the photo and water is 40 percent.
Caption:
"Here at the coast, major storms cause severe damage. In 2005 storm surge from Hurricane Wilma destroyed the beloved Flamingo Lodge. As sea level rises, storm surge becomes more devastating."
The next photo with the red one-foot marker shows 90 percent water. The coastline around Flamingo remains, transformed into a thin line. A few other high areas inland are also shown.
Caption:
"Florida sits just inches above sea level here. If sea level rises 1 foot, much of the Flamingo campground would be submerged, and the park road would become a causeway across open waters."
In the final photo with the red three-feet marker, the view is completely water with a few tiny islands around Flamingo.
Caption:
"If sea level rises 3 feet, Flamingo becomes an island. What changes will be needed so you could get here then?"
An illustration shows rising tides along a tall pole, representing the offshore piling, over time. "This pole marks current and projected sea levels to show how rising waters will submerge treasured Flamingo lands." From bottom to top:
The blue zero marker is average sea level in 2000.
The red three-foot marker is the projected sea level in 2010
The yellow marker is the average elevation of the marina and visitor center: about 4 feet.
The red seven-and-a-half feet marker is the projected sea level in 2100 plus storm surge.
The red twelve-feet marker is the projected sea level in 2300.