Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades


Book Description

Although the progress of environmental restoration projects in the Florida Everglades remains slow overall, there have been improvements in the pace of restoration and in the relationship between the federal and state partners during the last two years. However, the importance of several challenges related to water quantity and quality have become clear, highlighting the difficulty in achieving restoration goals for all ecosystem components in all portions of the Everglades. Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades explores these challenges. The book stresses that rigorous scientific analyses of the tradeoffs between water quality and quantity and between the hydrologic requirements of Everglades features and species are needed to inform future prioritization and funding decisions.




Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades


Book Description

Although the progress of environmental restoration projects in the Florida Everglades remains slow overall, there have been improvements in the pace of restoration and in the relationship between the federal and state partners during the last two years. However, the importance of several challenges related to water quantity and quality have become clear, highlighting the difficulty in achieving restoration goals for all ecosystem components in all portions of the Everglades. Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades explores these challenges. The book stresses that rigorous scientific analyses of the tradeoffs between water quality and quantity and between the hydrologic requirements of Everglades features and species are needed to inform future prioritization and funding decisions.










The Coastal Everglades


Book Description

Introduction -- The Everglades as icon -- Water, sustainability, and survival -- Ecosystem fragmentation and connectivity : legacies and future implications of a restored everglades -- The life of P : a biogeochemical and socio-political challenge in the Everglades -- Carbon cycles in the Florida coastal Everglades social-ecological system across scales -- Exogenous drivers : what has disturbance taught us? -- Back to the future : rebuilding the Everglades -- Re-imagining ecology through an Everglades lens.







Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades


Book Description

Twelve years into the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project, little progress has been made in restoring the core of the remaining Everglades ecosystem; instead, most project construction so far has occurred along its periphery. To reverse ongoing ecosystem declines, it will be necessary to expedite restoration projects that target the central Everglades, and to improve both the quality and quantity of the water in the ecosystem. The new Central Everglades Planning Project offers an innovative approach to this challenge, although additional analyses are needed at the interface of water quality and water quantity to maximize restoration benefits within existing legal constraints. Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades: The Fourth Biennial Review, 2012 explains the innovative approach to expedite restoration progress and additional rigorous analyses at the interface of water quality and quantity will be essential to maximize restoration benefits.







Everglades


Book Description

The 31 chapters provide a wealth of previously unpublished information, plus topic syntheses, for a wide range of ecological parameters. These include the physical driving forces that created and continue to shape the Everglades and patterns and processes of its flora and fauna. The book summarizes recent studies of the region's vegetation, alligators, wading birds, and endangered species such as the snail kite and Florida panther. This referee-reviewed volume is the product of collaboration among 58 international authors from 27 institutional affiliations over nearly five years. The book concludes with a synthesis of system-wide restoration hypotheses, as they apply to the Everglades, that represent the integration and a collective viewpoint from the preceding 30 chapters. Techniques and systems learned here can be applied to ecosystems around the world.




Success in the Making


Book Description

Water is the common lifeline for the natural and built environments in South Florida. Engineered flood control and water distribution systems, agriculture, growth, and development have disrupted the region's water quality, quantity, timing, and distribution (i.e., the hydropattern). Agricultural runoff and urban stormwater have introduced high levels of phosphorus, mercury, and other contaminants into the water system, polluting lakes, rivers, estuaries and the Everglades.