Everglades
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The
Everglades is an incredible place. I have gone there at least
40 times if not more. It is always nice to get out of the
city and see the wild. The 'Glades consist of pinelands
and hammocks along the rock ridge. The rock ridge is a
coral lime outcropping about 1-2 m higher than the surrounding areas.
As a result of this increase in elevation, the rock ridge is
covered forest community types and not marsh. Hammocks are
relatively dense tropical hardwood forests that are predominately
evergreen. They are never flooded and seldom burn.
Pinelands are open solely pine forests with a sparse
understory. They are partially flooded during the wet season
(summer) and have much less so soil than the hammocks (0-10cm soil
depth). Hiking in the pinelands can be treacherous because
the coral is sharp and jagged and numerous sink holes exist.
The pines are fire-tolerant land require fire to keep the
hammock from invading.
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These pictures show the
hammock
pushing up against the pinelands. Hammock trees will encroach
into the
pineland, but they die from the frequent ground fires that
move through the pinelands. It fire is suppressed, pinelands
will slowly be converted into hammocks.
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Sawgrass
and tree islands
The
other two vegetation types in the sloughs are the sawgrass marsh
and tree islands. The nutrient-poor sloughs are ideal for
sawgrass, which is only invaded by exotic cattails if the phosphorus
concentration increases. Unfortunately the parts of the
Everglades close to the agricultural areas are now cattail marshes
instead of the native sawgrass.
Tree
islands are hardwood hammocks not unlike the hammocks on the rock
ridge. The tree islands are slightly higher elevational
points (1m), which is conducive to tree growth. Small
seedlings begin to grow and organic matter from decaying leaves builds
up the tree island more, so that more tree can grow.
Eventually a small island of trees is created in a sea of
sawgrass.
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This is our means of
transportation
when the
water level is high enough pass over the grass in the avenues.
During the dry season we go to the tree islands on foot.
It
is not that bad, except that we ware walking a long distance in
alligator territory and in mucky water. The water is only
ankle
to knee deep with a few deep spots. Of course, the only way
to
tell where the deep places is to fall in them.
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Top:
Inside a tree island. The edges of
the tree islands are like a marsh with a more typical hammock
in the middle.
Bottom: Going
to
the middle of the tree island is not easy. The water can be
deep
and the mud is always deep. Fortunately I have waders in the
winter. In summers, the water is too deep and weather to hot
for
waders, so I just go in pants and get entirely black with muck.
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During the dry season (winter and
spring), most
of the
sawgrass is dry. Most of the water is in alligator holes
(perennial ponds), so all the alligators and most other wildlife head
to
these water sources until the rains come in the summer. I
have
seen more than 100 alligators in some ponds.
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Typical pinelands with
slash pine (Pinus
elliota var. densa)
as the sole overstory species with mostly palmettos, grass, and few
small tree species in the understory.
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Here you can see the sea
of sawgrass
and islands
of trees.
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Note the shape of this
tree island.
The
island is
largest in width and highest on the left and tapers to a point in
elevation and width on the right. The island is rain
drop-shaped
because of the way the water flows around it. The Everglades
is a
slow moving body of water from 20-100 cm deep that flows from the north
to the south to south southwest direction. The islands face
north
and the tail is to the south.
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Sawgrass is from 1-3m
tall.
At times,
sawgrass will be nearly as tall as the airboat.
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Inside a
hammock |
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Top
and middle: Inside
the hammock can be rather dense. Luckily there are paths
through
some of them such as this one where we do fieldwork (bottom).
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See even gators love
snickers bars
(This should
be a snickers commercial).
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Gray catbird lurching in
the bushes.
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