Historically one of the warmest and one of the wettest regions of our nation, the Southeast could face many challenges if its temperature and precipitation patterns change as some climate models suggest. Long valued for its agricultural and forestry production, the Southeast is likely to need to shift its priorities in order to accommodate its growing population and other entities that compete for its increasingly over-allocated water supplies.

Ironically, amidst the potential limits on fresh water resources is the harmful exposure to seawater that could increasingly challenge this region. Rising sea levels, resulting from changes in climate and on-going changes in the region, could erode, flood, or inundate coastal lands. Moreover, saltwater intrusion could compromise coastal freshwater supplies that many people and industries of the Southeast depend on, at the same time jeopardizing the health of the region's wetlands and the organisms that they support.

Stresses on the community health system could also be increased by changes in the region's temperature and precipitation patterns. These challenges and other potential climate-change effects discussed in this paper are based on models that, although imperfect, provide us with plausible future conditions. By considering such “what if -- scenarios, we can begin to design strategies that could be helpful in mitigating or perhaps preventing the potential climate-change impacts explored in this paper.