Essay about The Everglades: Florida's Unique Landscape of Change

The Everglades, also known as the River of Grass, is one of South Florida's most treasured areas. It is an area still full of wonder and mystery. The Everglades is lined with a specific type of limestone bedrock formed by tiny organisms called byrozoans. These animals, though not related to coral, act like coral by extracting dissolved limestone from the sea water around them and using it to construct protective chambers in which to live. They then attach to various kinds of sea grasses on the ocean floor and coat them as well. Individual chambers combine together to form rock-like structures. Over thousands of years, when South Florida was completely submerged, a vast amount of this limestone

On the morning of June 23, 2014, Henry and his family went to the marshy swamps of the Everglades. Once Henry stepped out of his car, he noticed a ravishing egret fly over his car. Right away he took a massive deep breathe of the astonishing place. It had a musky smell of plants and rotting wood. However, he noticed a pungent smell of reeking trash in the air. Anyhow, he continued to stroll along the sidewalk until he reached an enormous visitor center. Inside, he learned many fascinating facts about the animals that lived there. He also learned on how he could help stop pollution of the environment. Bored by the tedious words, he decided instead of reading about the Everglades, he was instead going to go see it. So, he and his family

Just like Shenandoah the Iapetus ocean started to open separating land masses Laurentia and Gondwana as Florida’s basement rock comes from the Gondwana region. Within the Neoproterozoic there is granitoids and igneous rocks that are found in central and northeastern part of Florida as evidence of Florida being part of Gondwana(M.C. Smith, written communication, 2017). In Figure 2, Findings of minerals such as schists and quartz

Everglades National Park is an Endangered World Heritage Site and it is a natural sight. It is a tropical wetland environment and is sub-tropical. It is also home to flora and fauna including the red mangrove tree, the slash pine tree, panthers, alligators, crocodiles, birds, flamingos and insects. It is 1,542,526 acers large, so it is able to be the habitat to 800 endangered species.

(Babbitt, 2007), (Dedekorkut 2003) Both the federal and state agencies, along the American people are dedicated to clean-up the water flows in the Everglades. With this, the Everglades Restoration, as Babbitt points-out, is an example of a national commitment to large scale restoration of degraded ecosystems (Babbitt 2007). However , currently, both the public and the political culture rely heavily on natural resource science for answers the many phenomena that exist in water resource policy.

First and foremost, a main reason why the water supply to the everglades is having a bad effect, is because of all of the past draining. As stated in source 1 (The Florida Everglades) it says “From 1905-1910 , the settlers coverted the land… the Everglades were nearly drained entirely.” This shows that these new settlers wanted to get rid of the Everglades completely. As a result to their actions the Florida lost 50% of the wildlife’s population and diversity. This also included the subtropical wilderness of the Everglades. Which contained grassy marshes, hardwood hammocks, and mangrove forests. The draining of the Everglades was only one of the reasons why that the water supply on the park is bad.

The Burmese Pythons are negatively affecting the Everglades by disrupting the food chain. Andrew Ng, author of, “Florida’s Python Hunt”, quoted this from the article, “With no natural predators, these eating machines appear to be wiping out huge numbers of opossums, raccoons, and bobcats, as well as many bird species.” The pythons have no natural predators, so animals that

Due to constantly changing water levels, ecosystems like the Everglades can be very unpredictable places. Since the 1800s, people have tried to control the Everglades to prevent flooding (Blake). Large canals were built to send the water into the ocean and away from the Everglades. The land along the canals dried up and became more

Nearly as large as the state of New Jersey, the Everglades used to measure about 6,000 square miles (Bucks, 1998). The Everglades was a complex wetland consisting of a mosaic of ecosystems. The heart of the Everglades was a slow moving body of water with a span of one hundred twenty miles long and forty miles wide with an average depth of six inches to two feet of water (Lauber,1973). This broad shallow, often called the "river of grass," was covered in a blanket of saw grass (not actually a grass but a sedge) that slowly drained the water from its main source, Lake Okeechobee, all the way to the southernmost tip of the state and into the Florida Bay. Shaped much like a saucer, when full Lake Okeechobee would send its overflow spilling into the shallows of the Everglades river. This natural filling process, along with the wet season's rains, is what fed the flow of the Everglades and the underlying aquifers for centuries.

Groundwater is the largest and most available usable source of drinking water in the state. There is a vast and mysterious system of caves and natural springs in North Central Florida. The cave system within the aquifer is one of the most amazing parts. The caves are remarkable in many ways. They are among the deepest and longest in the world, let alone the U.S. Another amazing aspect of the system is the purity of the water. The springs collectively produce billions of gallons of crystal clear water per day. The whole system stems from the Florida Aquifer that rests under the entire state. When most people think of Florida, they think of the weather and the beaches, but its the springs and the whole water

Pine Rocklands grow on the coastal Miami Rock Ridge, a limestone rock outcropping that extends south and west from North Miami Beach to Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park. Over 225 types of native plants occur here and more than 20% of the plant species are found here and nowhere else in the world. Five of these plant species are federally listed as threatened or endangered ( http://www.miamidade.gov/environment/pine-rocklands.asp). Florida’s Pine Rocklands are characterized by outcroppings with a low understory of tropical and temperate shrubs, palms, vines, grasses and herbaceous wildflowers — as well as a single species of over story tree, the slash pine. With very little soil substrate and a dependence on fire, these ecosystems are

Orlando Florida is known worldwide for its entertainment facilities, notably Walt Disney World, Universal Theme Park and other attractions. This paper reports on Orlando's natural environment and ecology, which doesn't get the attention and publicity that the theme parks do, but in the end these natural world places are more vital to the well being of the humans and wildlife in that area of Central Florida.

The ocean current that flows north alongside Florida’s east coast, the Gulf Stream, is one of the most important factors in determining Florida’s climate. Beginning near the equator, the warm waters of the North Equatorial Current eventually feed into the Gulf Stream, which begins at the southern tip of Florida. This Equatorial transfer of heat through ocean currents is what facilitates Florida’s warm and humid climate. To illustrate the influence ocean currents have on coastal climates, we can compare the climate of Puerto San Carlos, Baja California Sur with the climate of Miami, Florida, because they reside on North America’s west and east coasts respectively, around the 25’N Latitude line. Puerto San Carlos has a desert climate, averaging under 3 inches of precipitation per year, with 70 degree average temperatures; while Miami has a

Karst landscapes are hydrologically and geomorphologically unique natural systems in which water travels between Earth’s surface and interconnected voids underground (Bierman and Montgomery, 2014). Florida’s karst topography is mostly limestone (and some dolostone) and very susceptible to dissolution (Brinkmann, 2013). As naturally acidic rainwater percolates downward through the soil, over time, chemical dissolution of the limestone occurs, creating caverns, conduits, underground streams, and ultimately forming the Floridan Aquifer System, which underlies the entire state of Florida (Owen, 2013). The karst topography and related characteristics (e.g. springs and sinkholes) found throughout Florida are an integral part of the Ocala National Forest and have significantly contributed to the creation of current landscape (United States Department of Agriculture,

The Floridan Aquifer extends through several southeastern U.S. states and is one of the most productive kart landscape in the country. The Floridan aquifer system consists primarily of limestone rocks of high permeability, and is separated into two principal hydro-stratigraphic zones consisting of the Upper Floridan Aquifer (UFA) and the Lower Floridan Aquifer (LFA). The upper Floridan aquifer is the principal source of water supply in most of north and central Florida: “The Upper Floridan aquifer generally consists of the Ocala Limestone and the dolomite and dolomitic limestones of the upper one-third of the Avon Park Formation” (OReilly, et al. 2002). The LFA consists of “alternating beds of limestone and dolomite, and is characterized