Florida Everglades Essay

(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.

To begin with, Florida's Everglades is important because a large population of animals live in the Everglades. Many animals live at the Everglades for shelter and food. In the food chain a variety of species and plants rely on each other. The food chain allows biodiversity into the ecosystem. " Biodiversity is a good thing. Having many different kinds of plants and animals means that species have different choices for survival... if, for instance, snakes could only eat rabbits, and hawks could only eat snakes- then both snakes and hawks would die out...." In accordance with this piece of

One hundred years ago the Everglades covered close to 4 million acres between Lake Okeechobee and the Gulf of Mexico. Billions of gallons of water flowed into the Everglades. The population of the East coast of Florida was 23,000. This was partially due to a lack of suitable land for housing because of periodic flooding and the threat of hurricanes. When Florida was first becoming settled there were many attempts by settlers to make the area more hospitable. Most of these attempts failed. It was after two devastating hurricanes (1926 and 1928) that the Federal government had the US Army Corps of Engineers create a system of canals, levies, and dikes to further development of that area. They diverted much of the normal southward flow of water eastward. This allowed 1.3 million acres to be developed. It also left 2 million acres for the Everglades National Park and water conservation areas. 1 million acres was left for agricultural use (Everglades Agricultural

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.

A concrete network of canals was designed to bring water from the lake area to surrounding farmland in the dry season. Florida was becoming a booming area and more people came and more acres of the Everglades were cleared for farms, ranches, housing, roads, and railways. And more and more; the Everglades were dying (Miami Museum of Science, 1995).

Maintaining ecological diversity is necessary for the survival of a biological community. In the United States, American citizens are on the verge of irrevocably damaging one of the country's most unique and diverse treasures - the Florida Everglades. This national park is now the only remaining patch of a river that used to span 120 miles from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay. Dikes and levees created by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1940's drained this river to reduce flooding and increase useable water for the development of the region. This major diversion of water lead to a trickle down effect causing the continual decline of the environmental state of the Everglades. Since then, debates over the

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

The Everglades can be fixed it may take time and effort but it can be done.In "Are the Everglades Forever?" They state that "Every year, the Everglades lose some of their water to the coast simply by draining from the wetlands to the sea. The water loss is more than the ecosystem can keep up with..." And with the shortage of water in the Everglades means people that live off of the water in the Everglades with suffer a shortage of water as well. In article 1 they say that " CERP will restore a lot of the water by opening up unused dams and filling in old canals to help redirect water flow back to the wetlands." Plants and animals have resilience or the ability to recover from harm. Stated in "Are the Everglades Forever". If people work hard enough we can change the Everglades back to what it used to

Pythons are changing the Everglades also by destroying Florida’s ecosystem. A blog post by EcoEchoes states, “With no natural predators, these eating machines appear to be wiping out huge numbers of species,”. If nothing is killing off or removing these deadly snakes, they will eventually take over all of Florida once the Everglades are

Since we get a lot of good outcomes from the Everglades , doing it bad will do us bad .From tourism to water usage . By letting old snake pets out there it will decrease the population of other animals , so the next time you were to go visit you would see nothing but snakes and some gators. Then there has been water loss from the Everglades by draining it to the sea . As it says here from the article The Everglades: Quick facts it states "One out every three Floridians (7million people)rely on the Everglades for their water supply". So dams to slow it down will be going

The phosphorus levels were discovered in 1986. The Everglades Forever Act was signed in 1994 clean it up. IN 1999 a report of the Everglades was reported to congress which led to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in December, 2000. Many were unhappy with this and the Army began the the Central Everglades Planning Project to dig and redirect the water into the Everglades. This cost $1 Billion which was the main problem. In 2013, the Everglades Restoration Act invested 880 million dollars into restoring the Everglades, which is still pending

Many people are wondering, when will this be fixed? Good news- soon!! According to page 116, it explains, “A Supreme Court decision made in 2004 implemented 8.4 billion dollars for the project to re-establish the natural flow of the water to the Everglades in the next 30 years.” Since 1900, drainage has eroded the original wetlands by 50%. Another reason we have so many problems is the sugar cane, with all the sugar cane there is no land left to support life. This is a shame that all the wildlife is being affected or dying

Home can't be grown again. The Everglades is home to many species but slowly those homes are being destroyed but human activities or by non-native animals being released and disturbing the food chain. In recent decades we have realized how much we benefit from the Everglades but they wont last long if the Everglades are not taken care properly.

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,

Each Everglades habitat needs to keep a delicate balance to stay healthy. When things get out of balance problems begin. For example, chemicals, that’s pollute the Everglades can kill algae. Algae is a simple life form at the bottom of he food chain. If the algae dissapear, the animals that eat algae have no food. This can cause plants, and animals in the food chain to become out of balance.