The Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) LTER Program studies how global climate change and shifting approaches to water management impact the Florida Everglades and the 9 million residents of the region. Profoundly changed by regional water management practices and altered patterns of land use, the Everglades has been reduced to less than half its original extent, and is now primarily contained within Everglades National Park.  Although the present day park is a mere remnant of the historical Everglades, it provides an excellent laboratory for studying how coastal ecosystems interact with human activities.  This long term study examines the restoration of water flow to the Everglades in a landscape-level experiment that tests general ecological theory, serves as a guide for effective restoration policy, and allows development of new frameworks for discoveries in coastal ecosystem and restoration science.

Intellectual Merit:  During phase II of this long-term program (2007-2012), we discovered that delays in freshwater restoration have increased rates of saltwater encroachment into the freshwater Everglades.  Saltwater is seeping inland both above and below-ground and is reducing the abundance of the dominant marsh plant, sawgrass.  The intrusion of marine water has increased the concentrations of phosphorus, an important plant nutrient, above those on the Everglades interior and has led to an increase in the density of salt-tolerant mangroves.  Our results have revealed that these subtropical mangrove forests and nearby seagrass communities remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than most other ecosystems on the planet.  However, the effects of persistent saltwater encroachment will influence the fate of this carbon which is primarily stored in Everglades soils.  FCE research has shown that the organic material produced by these coastal plant communities is less abundant when freshwater flow is reduced. As an important food source in Everglades estuarine food webs, changes in the abundance of organic matter can influence animal populations.  Tracking studies have shown that large, aquatic, consumers such as alligators and bull sharks spend much of their time in the upper freshwater marshes of the Everglades.  We have also learned that they also travel to marine waters to feed and thereby transport marine nutrients and energy inland. Our results have also indicated that tropical storms punctuate the directional pressure of saltwater encroachment and the continued diversion of freshwater away from the Everglades drainages.  In addition, we have found that sometimes these storm surge supply sediments and nutrients that help the coastal system to recover more quickly. 

Finally, our work has begun to reveal how South Florida residents have responded to changes in the Everglades and led to conflict over land and resource distribution decisions between stakeholders and ultimately delayed the restoration process.  FCE research is unique in its partnership with government agency scientists.  Through this collaboration, modeling efforts are being used to project future scenarios for the Everglades under a range of management plans and climate change conditions and had enabled us to influence restoration decisions that benefit the ecosystem and people of South Florida.

Over 200 refereed journal articles, 4 books, 19 book chapters, 3 thematic issues of journals, and 36 dissertations and theses were produced between 2007-2012 (see http://fcelter.fiu.edu/publications/ for a full list).  A total of 135 datasets have been generated, 125 of which are publically available online through a centralized system (https://portal.lternet.edu/nis/) that enables discovery by scien...

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