Everglades Research Paper

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

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.

The Everglades is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. The Everglades is a rough terrain landscape which is home for many rare and endangered species like the manatee, american crocodile, and the elusive florida panther. Those animals and possibly part of Florida's human population. Because work crews began draining the Everglades water towards farms and cities the Everglades vast stock of water is slowly decreasing. This is bad because The Everglades water source is the greatest source of drinking water to

The Everglades mainly found in the United States of America (USA) is a 2 million acre of wetland ecosystem that stretches from the Central of Florida near to Orlando to the Bay of Florida in the south. During rainy seasons, Lake Okeechobee experience upsurge in water volumes causing it to discharge the waters into the “river of grass” that characterize with shallow slow moving water carrying grass marshes. The river flows south and passing through different habitats namely wet prairie, cypress swamps, mangroves, Everglades National Park and lastly into the Florida Bay. The current size of the Everglades is smaller than it was originally. The decrease in size has majorly been due to human activities that include diversions of the water for agriculture and flood control as well as urban development. The Everglades borders the cities of Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. The region is tourist attraction for birders, boaters, and anglers among others. The Everglades ecosystem supports agricultural activities besides supplying clean drinking water to the southern Florida residents. Just like other natural ecosystems like lakes and forests, the Everglades is facing dangers of global warming. The increasing global temperatures are causing a significant change and destruction of its iconic natural appearance. Besides the direct effects, global warming is

The Everglades is a vast region that stretches from the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee and is filled with a unique and world-famous ecosystem that is exclusive to the rest of the world. It is located in southern Florida and takes up 1.5 million of the land. While there are many diverse species, there are around 500 human inhabitants. This region is one of the largest wetlands in the US and the only existing Everglades in the entire world. Because of this and other pressing factors, about one-fifth of the Everglades are protected by the Everglades National Park. The fact that the Everglades are one of kind also means that anything that happens not only affects itself locally, but also nationally and globally. And now, there are many problems

The everglades is a portion of a large watershed that runs in the locale of Orlando. The restoration of the everglades has been an ongoing program to remedy the damage done on the environment during the 20th century in southern Florida. It is the most comprehensive and costly attempt to repair environment in history. The degradation of the everglades watershed became an issue in the US in 1770s after the construction of a jetport in the big cypress swamp was proposed. The studies that followed showed that the port would destroy the ecosystem in everglades national park and south Florida (Ogden 803). After a long time of destructive practices, the federal and state agencies have been looking for ways to create an equilibrium of the ecosystem

Recently, the heap of pollution caused a massive drainage in the Everglades’ water quality. Tramontana and Johnson (2003) reported that “much of Florida’s early development was based upon draining and removing excess water from wetlands… and it was thought if drained, the land could be put to better use” (Human Development section, para. 2). Pollution destroys the cleanliness of the wetland leading to a decrease in restoration. Millions amount of cash produced to repair water quality leads to the consequences of continuous flow of freshwater.

Many people who live in Florida know about the Everglades and the problems that it is facing. People and authorities have been fighting for clean, plentiful water in the Everglades; humans and thousands of animal species depend on it. Water supply is agreeably the main problem for the Everglades, and it can affect it in many ways, such as killing off animal species, providing a lack of clean drinking water, and ruining the size and beauty of the park.

This paper is going to focus on the current environmental state of the Florida Everglades. It will look into how humans have impacted and effected the Everglades, from pollutants to drainage to invasive species. I’ll also discuss how we are now trying to remedy what has happened and preserve and restore them to prevent further damage, and if conservationists are having any kind of success or not.

Growing up I was fortunate to live five miles from the main entrance to the largest subtropical, sawgrass prairie in North America, Everglades National Park. For years, the Everglades revealed its natural treasures as my family and I enjoyed hours of canoeing, hiking, fishing, and bird watching within the park. I had the privilege to attend an elementary school that established a partnership with the Everglades Environmental Center. In fact, in 4th grade I was one of twenty-five students selected to go camping five nights at the Loop Road Interpretive Center, forty miles deep in the glades. My camping experience provided an invaluable lesson about always being honest and the importance of obeying the national park regulations.

Some places are hit harder than others. One of the hardest hit areas is the Florida Everglades. The Greater Everglades Ecosystem is a region of the tropical wetlands south of Orlando Florida in the Florida watershed and it spans roughly 11,000 square miles (L. Perez, telephone interview, February 26, 2014). The Everglades used to be twice that size but much of it was redeveloped by humans for agricultural land to grow sugarcane (Babbit, 1994). The everglades is sometimes referred to as the “River of Grass” due to the water slowly flowing through vast grassland. The source of the water that has created the everglades comes from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles away in central

The Everglades is extremely delicate, so even if a rainstorm comes, that could lead to another problem with the water supply. The Everglades gets very contaminated from the fertilizer used to grow sugar cane. In “ Can We Fix the Water Supply, “ it states, “...crop introduces chemicals and excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into the delicate ecosystem.” The amount of problems that are involved in trying to improve the Everglades has it’s costs. All of the problems cost about $8.4 billion! The problem with the water supply is that it is very low and affects many

Everglades, the largest subtropical wetland of North America, has encountered anthropogenic perturbation since the last quarter of 19th century when canals were built and peatlands were drained for economic gain (Godfrey and Catton, 2011). Since then, the system has been exploited, drained, polluted and changed from its natural setup to escalate and widen the potential services from it. The present state is a highly regulated system to buttress economic productivity and fulfill several regional demands. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, one of the world’s largest restoration initiative, aims to restore, protect and preserve the water resources of central and southern Florida (National Research Council, 2014). While the restoration program is built on a foundation of retrospective science backed by several years of sophisticated research on understanding the Everglades and similar ecosystem (Estenoz and Bush, 2015), the human dimension of restoration was not studied adequately(Clarke and Dalrymple, 2003; Kranzer, 2002; National Research Council, 2014). Particularly, the spatial extent of residents’ preference or the heterogeneity of their opinion is important for CERP as the plan aims to restore ecosystem without compromising the present services (e.g. flood control, water for agricultural, urban and industrial uses etc.), which are also spatially related.

The Everglades is known for its wonderful plants, birds, and reptiles, but what if those magnificent, beautiful things were gone forever. An Endangered is a species that is, or soon may be, in danger of being gone. A threatened species is a species that is very likely to become endangered in the near future unless the species or where it lives is fully protected for its survival. Eight million people and countless species of animals that call the Everglades home. Everglades contains many endangered species including the Florida Leafwing Butterfly, Green Turtle, Leatherback Turtle, and the Miami Blue Butterfly. The manatee is even federally listed as endangered. They are trying to make laws and develop projects to protect the Everglades Endangered

Water is necessity for people in everyday life so individuals could shower, clean, drink, have good personal hygiene, etc. All the water being used comes from water supplies that guarantee clean, uncontaminated water; the water that is used becomes waste water. In the Tampa Bay Area, the population is increasing everyday which can cause a problem in the near future for the water supply. Although water shortages are currently not a problem in the state of Florida, the increasing population could make it a threat; water conservation methods should be considered so it can meet the increasing demands of growth, make the water dumped in the river healthier, keep the city's reservoir always full all year –especially during the dry winter months, and even provide extra water for use by other governments.