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Armed with a $7 million grant from the Army Corp of Engineers, University of Florida researchers are working to bolster shoreline resilience and restore troubled wetlands in St. Augustine through nature-based solutions.
“The idea of nature-based solutions is to build what we sometimes refer to as green infrastructure, to use living, natural components as the building blocks,” said Andrew Altieri, Ph.D., an assistant professor with the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment and interim director of the Center for Coastal Solutions, also known as CCS. Instead of building man-made structures to protect wetlands, for example, restoration crews can move dredged natural sediment otherwise destined for costly disposal to increase wetlands’ size and elevation, restoring their ability to protect shorelines from storm surge, keep pace with sea-level change, filter toxins, store carbon and provide habitats for wildlife.
The project is in concert with the Army Corps of Engineers’ goal to naturally reuse and repurpose at least 70% of dredged sediment into other natural areas to benefit habitats and restoration by 2030.
“It is critical to understand, test and model how natural processes can be harnessed and strategically implemented to sustainably meet the challenge of rapidly intensifying coastal hazards while also providing environmental, economic and social benefits,” Altieri wrote in the project’s technical summary. Overall, the multi-disciplinary project closely examines patterns and processes of change in coastal landscapes. That includes wetlands — marshes and mangroves — and beach/dune systems.
The project comes as these coastal areas are facing threats both natural and human. These areas are essential to wildlife, air quality, native vegetation, storm protection and the overall health of the ecosystem. A 2008 study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported a net loss of about 361,000 acres of wetlands in the coastal watersheds of the eastern United States between 1998 and 2004 — an average net decrease of 59,000 acres each year, with experts citing sea-level rise as one of the primary factors.
“We're trying to understand the patterns of that loss and what's leading to it,” Altieri said. “These systems are essentially the first and sometimes last line of defense against coastal hazards, risks that include storm surges and coastal flooding. They are forming a buffer, this kind of protective layer on our coast. But they're changing, generally for the worse and are in danger of being lost.” With this project, the CCS-led research team plans to advance the science, technology and engineering principles of nature-based solutions.
With marshes, the primary concern is elevation loss, which can drown the vegetation critical to the ecosystem. They are sinking, eroding and succumbing to sea-level changes, Altieri said.
“The plants are really important for trapping sediment and holding sediment,” he said. “You lose some of the plants, then you get more erosional loss and a lack of the accumulation of sediment.” Sediment is natural muck on the bottom of water bodies.
“If we can add sufficient sediment to increase the elevation to a level where the plants thrive, then they will retain that sediment that's been added to hopefully trap more sediment and accumulate more biomass through their growth,” Altieri said. “It’s something that may need to be done periodically. You may stop that decline, but you may even reverse the process of loss and change the trajectory.” As a bonus, this process saves the cost of disposing of dredged sediment, which is usually piped offshore or to a materials-management area.
This project is the next step for CCS-led coastal resilience efforts in St. Augustine. In 2024, CCS and WSP Environment & Infrastructure Inc. launched a coastal wetlands-restoration project to keep pace with sea level change and erosion. The 2025 work is a standalone project with separate funding, Altieri said.
The current project also has more research disciplines and project partners, including UF researchers from Landscape Architecture, Geological Sciences and the School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatic Sciences.
“Storm surges, wave energy, coastal flooding – all of that can be slowed or reduced because of wetlands,” Altieri said. “They are basically like shock absorbers. These wetlands, beaches and dunes can be lost or eroded to some degree, but the upland area behind them is essentially protected.” Researching the resilience of dunes comes with a different set of dynamics. Here, they are looking at the plants that support the dunes – sea oats and panic grass, for example. That vegetation also provides a habitat for animals such as beach mice, turtles and birds.
On the beach, the team also is looking at water energy and how grain size affects the stability of dunes.
“It’s understanding water movement, water energy. How is that interacting with depositing sediment, moving sediment around, sorting sediment? With water, you tend to carry finer particles further than coarser materials,” he said. What does success look like after the award’s five years end?
“We'll have an understanding of what's changing on our coasts and why,” Altieri said. “We'll have an understanding of how we can work within this system to modify the natural components and utilize the natural processes. And we will hopefully be working with partners through additional funding mechanisms to actually apply that towards implementation of solutions to increase coastal resilience.” The team also includes Peter Adams, Department of Geological Sciences; Julie Bruck, Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning; Maitane Olabarrieta, ESSIE; Alex Sheremet, ESSIE; Nina Stark, ESSIE; Ben Wilkinson, Geomatics Program, School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences; and Xiao Yu, ESSIE.
University of Florida researchers are calling for a national transformation in how we address the ongoing epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, starting with a fundamental shift in how we approach health, agriculture and food.
Published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the article argues that fruits and vegetables must be treated not just as food — but as medicine.
With 73% of U.S. adults and 35% of children classified as overweight or obese, the authors warn that the crisis is not only an individual health issue but a national economic and security threat.
Andrew Hanson, Ph.D., a co-author and professor of horticultural sciences at UF/IFAS, emphasized a sense of urgency and collective responsibility toward solving this health crisis.
“This isn’t business as usual. We’re taking a public-interest view. This is the kind of thing we all need to be talking about. It’s too important not to,” he said. The article proposes a roadmap for change, including creating five National Institutes of Health-supported “Food Is Medicine” centers across the U.S., with Florida as a leading candidate; scaling up domestic fruit and vegetable production to meet national dietary needs; partnering with food producer and processors to make healthy foods more accessible, affordable and appealing; and reforming medical and nutrition education to include horticultural sciences and vice versa.
The article highlights that only 1 in 10 adults meets the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables, and that U.S. production falls far short of what’s needed to support a healthy population. The authors call for a dramatic expansion of fruit and vegetable production, especially high-impact crops like berries, leafy greens and carrots.
Christopher Gunter, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UF/IFAS Department of Horticultural Sciences, said the team’s goal is to push the role fruit and vegetables crops can play in improving human health into the national consciousness.
“As a discipline, horticulture and the science of fruit and vegetables have been largely ignored in this conversation,” Gunter said. “Our goal is to move the needle on health with fruit and vegetables.” Hanson said about 80% of the nation’s cropland is used to grow soybeans, corn and wheat — most of which are processed into products with low nutritional value that contribute to the obesity and Type 2 diabetes epidemic.
Mike Jaffee, M.D., a co-author and professor of neurology in the UF College of Medicine, stressed the broader implications of a high-vegetable diet on brain health.
“Obesity and insulin resistance are linked to inflammation and neurodegeneration. We’re living longer, but our brains aren’t keeping up. That’s where the real cost to individuals and the health care system comes in,” he said. Gunter agreed, adding, “This epidemic reduces the longevity and productivity of our citizens. It limits the momentum communities need to grow healthy and resilient families.”
Hanson pointed out that higher socioeconomic groups are better positioned to meet dietary recommendations, making this not just a health issue, but a deeply embedded social and economic one.
“This crisis takes an unduly large toll on people with lower incomes and less time. To eat enough fruits and vegetables in the current system, you need substantial income and time to prepare food. That’s a luxury many don’t have,” he said. The authors argue that farmers bring essential knowledge to the table.
“They understand how environmental factors impact nutritional quality,” Gunter said.
A team of researchers, including Kevin Butler, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, is sounding the alarm on a disturbing trend in artificial intelligence: the rapid rise of AI-generated sexually explicit images created without the subject’s consent.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Butler and colleagues from UF, Georgetown University and the University of Washington investigated a growing class of tools that allow users to generate realistic nude images from uploaded photos — tools that require little skill, cost virtually nothing and are largely unregulated.
“Anybody can do this,” said Butler, director of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research. “It’s done on the web, often anonymously, and there’s no meaningful enforcement of age or consent.” The team has coined the term SNEACI, short for synthetic non-consensual explicit AI-created imagery, to define this new category of abuse. The acronym, pronounced “sneaky,” highlights the secretive and deceptive nature of the practice. “SNEACI really typifies the fact that a lot of these are made without the knowledge of the potential victim and often in very sneaky ways,” said Patrick Traynor, a professor and associate chair of research in UF's Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering and co-author of the paper. In their study, which will be presented at the upcoming USENIX Security Symposium this summer, the researchers conducted a systematic analysis of 20 AI “nudification” websites. These platforms allow users to upload an image, manipulate clothing, body shape and pose, and generate a sexually explicit photo — usually in seconds.
Unlike traditional tools like Photoshop, these AI services remove nearly all barriers to entry, Butler said.
“Photoshop requires skill, time and money,” he said. “These AI application websites are fast, cheap — from free to as little as six cents per image — and don’t require any expertise.” According to the team’s review, women are disproportionately targeted, but the technology can be used on anyone, including children. While the researchers did not test tools with images of minors due to legal and ethical constraints, they found “no technical safeguards preventing someone from doing so.”
Only seven of the 20 sites they examined included terms of service that require image subjects to be over 18, and even fewer enforced any kind of user age verification.
“Even when sites asked users to confirm they were over 18, there was no real validation,” Butler said. “It’s an unregulated environment.” The platforms operate with little transparency, using cryptocurrency for payments and hosting on mainstream cloud providers. Seven of the sites studied used Amazon Web Services, and 12 were supported by Cloudflare — legitimate services that inadvertently support these operations.
“There’s a misconception that this kind of content lives on the dark web,” Butler said. “In reality, many of these tools are hosted on reputable platforms.” Butler’s team also found little to no information about how the sites store or use the generated images.
“We couldn’t find out what the generators are doing with the images once they’re created” he said. “It doesn’t appear that any of this information is deleted.” High-profile cases have already brought attention to the issue. Celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Melania Trump have reportedly been victims of AI-generated non-consensual explicit images. Earlier this year, Trump voiced support for the Take It Down Act, which targets these types of abuses and was signed into law this week by President Donald Trump.
But the impact extends beyond the famous. Butler cited a case in South Florida where a city councilwoman stepped down after fake explicit images of her — created using AI — were circulated online.
“These images aren’t just created for amusement,” Butler said. “They’re used to embarrass, humiliate and even extort victims. The mental health toll can be devastating.” The researchers emphasized that the technology enabling these abuses was originally developed for beneficial purposes — such as enhancing computer vision or supporting academic research — and is often shared openly in the AI community.
“There’s an emerging conversation in the machine learning community about whether some of these tools should be restricted,” Butler said. “We need to rethink how open-source technologies are shared and used.” Butler said the published paper — authored by student Cassidy Gibson, who was advised by Butler and Traynor and received her doctorate degree this month — is just the first step in their deeper investigation into the world of AI-powered nudification tools and an extension of the work they are doing at the Center for Privacy and Security for Marginalized Populations, or PRISM, an NSF-funded center housed at the UF Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
Butler and Gibson recently met with U.S. Congresswoman Kat Cammack for a roundtable discussion on the growing spread of non-consensual imagery online. In a newsletter to constituents, Cammack, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the issue a major priority. She emphasized the need to understand how these images are created and their impact on the mental health of children, teens and adults, calling it “paramount to putting an end to this dangerous trend.”
"As lawmakers take a closer look at these technologies, we want to give them technical insights that can help shape smarter regulation and push for more accountability from those involved," said Butler. “Our goal is to use our skills as cybersecurity researchers to address real-world problems and help people.”
