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Improve water deliveries to the Everglades by increasing them at a rate of approximately 26% into Shark River Slough.[70] |
Remove barriers to sheetflow by destroying or removing 240 miles (390 km) of canals and levees, specifically removing the Miami Canal and reconstructing the Tamiami Trail from a highway to culverts and bridges to allow sheetflow to return to a more natural rate of water flow into Everglades National Park.[71] |
Store water in quarries and reuse wastewater by employing existing quarries to supply the South Florida metropolitan area as well as Florida Bay and the Everglades. Construct two wastewater treatment plants capable of discharging 22 billion US gallons (83 Gl) a day to recharge the Biscayne Aquifer.[71] |
The implementation of all of the advised actions, the report stated, would "result in the recovery of healthy, sustainable ecosystems throughout south Florida".[72] The report admitted that it did not have all the answers, though no plan could.[73] However, it predicted that it would restore the "essential defining fea... |
Though it was optimistic, the Restudy noted, |
It is important to understand that the 'restored' Everglades of the future will be different from any version of the Everglades that has existed in the past. While it certainly will be vastly superior to the current ecosystem, it will not completely match the pre-drainage system. This is not possible, in light of the i... |
The report was the result of many cooperating agencies that often had conflicting goals. An initial draft was submitted to Everglades National Park management who asserted not enough water would be released to the park quickly enough—that the priority went to delivering water to urban areas. When they threatened to ref... |
Implementation |
The State of Florida reports that it has spent more than $2 billion on the various projects since CERP was signed. More than 36,000 acres (150 km2) of Stormwater Treatment Areas (STA) have been constructed to filter 2,500 short tons (2,300 t) of phosphorus from Everglades waters. An STA covering 17,000 acres (69 km2) w... |
A changing economy, too, hurt the plan. It passed in a year with a record budget surplus, but the climate changed sharply after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Some state officials say the plan, which involves dozens of complex engineering projects, also got bogged down in federal bureaucracy, a victim of "analysis para... |
The New York Times, November 2007 |
Despite the bipartisan goodwill and declarations of the importance of the Everglades, the region still remains in danger. Political maneuvering continues to impede CERP: sugar lobbyists promoted a bill in the Florida legislature in 2003 that increased the acceptable amount of phosphorus in Everglades waterways from 10 ... |
Reassessment of CERP |
Florida still receives a thousand new residents daily and lands slated for restoration and wetland recovery are often bought and sold before the state has a chance to bid on them. The competitive pricing of real estate also drives it beyond the purchasing ability of the state.[85] Because the State of Florida is assis... |
In September 2008 the National Research Council (NRC), a nonprofit agency providing science and policy advice to the federal government,[89] submitted a report on the progress of CERP. The report noted "scant progress" in restoration because of problems in budgeting, planning, and bureaucracy.[90] The NRC report called... |
In January 2010, work began on the C-111 canal, built in the 1960s to drain irrigated farmland, to reconstruct it to keep from diverting water from Everglades National Park. Two other projects focusing on restoration were also scheduled to start in 2010.[92] Governor Crist announced the same month that $50 million woul... |
Before drainage, the Everglades, a region of tropical wetlands in southern Florida, were an interwoven mesh of marshes and prairies covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2). The Everglades is both a vast watershed that has historically extended from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles (160 km) south to Florida Bay (around one-th... |
Although sawgrass and sloughs are the enduring geographical icons of the Everglades, other ecosystems are just as vital, and the borders marking them are subtle or nonexistent. Pinelands and tropical hardwood hammocks are located throughout the sloughs; the trees, rooted in soil inches above the peat, marl, or water, s... |
These ecological systems are always changing due to environmental factors. Geographic features such as the Western Flatwoods, Eastern Flatwoods, and the Atlantic Coastal Ridge affect drainage patterns. Geologic elements, climate, and the frequency of storms and fire are formative processes for the Everglades. They help... |
Shaping processes of ecosystems |
At only 5,000 years of age, the Everglades is a young region in geological terms. Its ecosystems are in constant flux as a result of the interplay of three factors: the type and amount of water present, the geology of the region, and the frequency and severity of fires.[2][3] |
Water |
A storm over the Shark River in the Everglades, 1966 |
Photo:Charles Barron / State Library and Archives of Florida |
Water is the dominant element in the Everglades, and it shapes the land, vegetation, and animal life of South Florida. The South Florida climate was once arid and semi-arid, interspersed with wet periods. Between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, sea levels rose, submerging portions of the Florida peninsula and causing the ... |
The Everglades are unique; no other wetland system in the world is nourished primarily from the atmosphere.[5] Before the first attempt at draining the Everglades in 1882, the entire watershed extended from Orlando to Florida Bay comprising the Kissimmee–Lake Okeechobee–Everglades (KLOE) watershed. Kissimmee River outl... |
Severe weather, in the form of tropical storms and hurricanes, also affects the structure of the Everglades. Between 1871 and 2003, 40 tropical cyclones struck the Everglades, usually every one to three years.[10][11] These storms alter the coastline, flush decaying vegetation from estuaries, strip weakened branches fr... |
Geology |
Further information: Everglades § Geology |
A vast marshland could only have been formed due to the underlying rock formations in southern Florida.[15] The floor of the Everglades formed between 25 million and 2 million years ago when the Florida peninsula was a shallow sea floor. The peninsula has been covered by sea water at least seven times since the earlies... |
Shorter hydroperiods of three or four months promote the growth of periphyton: algae and other microscopic organisms covered with calcium carbonate crystals.[15] Periphyton is the basic building block of marl, a calcitic mud. In areas with hydroperiods of longer than nine months, peat builds up over hundreds or thousan... |
Five types of peat appear in the Everglades system; each type supports a specific type of vegetation, such as sawgrass, tree islands, or custard apple trees.[17] Peat buildup is possible because water prevents oxygen from quickly decomposing plant matter. Once peat buildup reaches the surface, oxygen reacts with the mi... |
Fire |
Fire near a cypress dome in the Turner River area in the early 1920s |
Fire is another important element in the maintenance of the Everglades. The majority are caused by lightning strikes from thunderstorms during the wet season. Their effects are largely superficial, and serve to foster further plant growth: sawgrass will burn above water, but the roots are preserved. Fire in the sawgras... |
Researchers have noted that fires appear in cycles associated with those of the hydroperiods.[3] The first cycle is the annual wet-season fires that occur with rapid frequency during the summer, but are quickly extinguished. Dry-season fires are rarer due to the lack of lightning, but their damage may be more pervasive... |
Ecosystem characteristics |
A color satellite image of the lower third of the Florida peninsula with labels superimposed over major landscapes before human alterations: directly to the south of Lake Okeechobee is a thin custard apple and cypress swamp, a much larger cypress swamp borders the lake to the east, and a major section of western pine f... |
Major landscape types in the Everglades before human action. Source: U.S. Geological Survey |
The Everglades are dominated by sawgrass in water; this is the titular "River of Grass" popularized by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947. This river contains a wide variety of plant and animal life. Early American environmentalist Gifford Pinchot said of the Everglades, "It is a region so different that it hardly seems ... |
The sawgrass grows in prairies or strands, in between channels of water in a shallow river 100 miles (160 km) long and 60 miles (97 km) wide flowing from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Some authors refer to the sawgrass and water combination as the "true Everglades" or just "the Glades".[23][24] Prior to the first dra... |
Sawgrass marsh |
Most marshes in the Everglades are dominated by the sedge known as Cladium, or sawgrass in common terminology. The sedge is a three-dimensional v-shaped stalk with upward-pointing teeth. Sawgrass thrives in the slowly moving water, but may die if oxygen is unable to reach its roots and is particularly vulnerable to flo... |
Where sawgrass grows densely, few animals or other plants thrive, although alligators often choose these locations for nesting. Where there is more room, periphyton grows, appearing as mats or brown sausage-shaped chunks. Periphyton is predominantly algae, although over 100 different microorganisms help create it.[28] ... |
Freshwater sloughs |
Sloughs are channels of free-flowing water in between the sawgrass marshes. Sloughs are deeper than sawgrass marshes, about 3 feet (0.91 m), and may stay flooded for at least 11 months out of the year if not multiple years in a row.[30] The peat beds that support sawgrass are slightly elevated and may begin abruptly cr... |
A black and white illustration of a cross section of fresh water ecosystems: from the left is in the deepest water; pond sloughs merge into the slightly higher wet prairies, then the sawgrass marsh. Large cypress trees take over and the water deepens slightly and the land raises above the water completely indicating wh... |
A cross section of fresh water ecosystems in the Everglades, with relative average water depths |
Wet prairie |
A color photograph taken from above of a mid-sized alligator with its head above water resting on an outcropping of plants and the rest of its body submerged in clear water. The alligator is surrounded by strands of yellow and brown strands of periphyton underwater |
An alligator amid strands of periphyton in the Everglades |
Two kinds of wet prairies thrive in the Everglades: marl and water-marsh community. Wet prairies are slightly elevated like sawgrass marshes, but contain abundant plant diversity. Marl prairies are located where marl covers limestone that may protrude as pinnacles or erode into solution holes: depressions formed by the... |
Alligators have created an ecological niche in wet prairies; they dig at low spots with their claws and snouts and create ponds free of vegetation that remain submerged throughout the dry season. Alligator holes are integral to the survival of aquatic invertebrates, turtles, fish, small mammals, and birds during extend... |
Tropical hardwood hammock |
In a tropical hardwood hammock, plants are very dense and diverse. |
Main article: Tropical hardwood hammock |
Islands of trees featuring dense temperate or tropical trees are called tropical hardwood hammocks.[38] They may rise between 1 and 3 feet (0.30 and 0.91 m) above water level in freshwater sloughs, sawgrass prairies, or pineland. These islands illustrate the difficulty of characterizing the climate of the Everglades as... |
These hammocks form on slightly elevated areas unharmed by deep peat fires or limestone plateaus rising several inches above the surrounding peat. Hardwood hammocks exhibit a mixture of subtropical and hardwood trees that grow in very dense clumps, such as southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), gumbo limbo (Bursera si... |
Florida strangler figs (Ficus aurea) are common in hammocks, and find particular ease in rooting at the heads of cabbage palms (Sabal palmetto). After taking root into the ground, they build complex frameworks around the host tree, eventually squeezing out light and nutrients, and essentially taking its place.[43] A va... |
Tropical hardwood hammocks in the Everglades have been harvested for lumber, particularly by shipbuilders seeking West Indian mahogany and black ironwood (Krugiodendron ferreum). The largest and most mature of these trees had been removed by the late 18th century.[39] Seminoles made their villages in hammocks in the la... |
Bayheads and willowheads |
Some hammocks are dominated by types of vegetation that grow in relation to the amount of water or type of soil present. The majority of hardwood hammocks create a thin poor soil covering the limestone called humus, made of decaying plant matter and moisture trapped by the structure of the trees. When peat forms the la... |
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