The Floccometer
A Long Term Research Site in the Ridge and Slough Everglades
Tamiami
Trail
(a dam)
Photo B: Degraded R&S
Photo A: Healthy R&S
Water Levels prior to Drainage (<1880)
Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA
Imagery courtesy of Google Earth
.
(Captions below)
Then and Now
Before 1880 (left), water flowed continuously over the sloped Everglades, from 21 feet above sea level at Lake Okeechobee to 0 ft at Florida Bay. Water depths rose and fell with the alternating wet and dry seasons, but at any given time, depths in sloughs were similar throughout the Ridge and Slough landscape, so the water slope remained parallel to the ground slope (left).
At present (right), Tamiami Trail acts as a dam, impounding Water Conservation Area 3A (WCA 3A) and limiting flow into Everglades National Park (ENP). Only the S-12 and S-333 structures allow outflow. When closed, gravity tends to level the water surface in WCA 3A and water depths downstream in ENP become very shallow (right).
------ENP------
---------WCA 3A---------
Everglades Restoration
What hydrological processes and conditions are necessary to protect and restore healthy Ridge and Slough habitat in the Everglades? This is a critical question as large portions of this habitat have degraded from healthy (Photo A, below) to unhealthy (Photo B). When it degrades, open water slough feeding areas are lost and replaced with continuous, unbroken sawgrass.
Some Everglades researchers have hypothesized that water borne movement of "floc," that is, of organic particles in the water column, played an important role in maintaining the distinct elevations that originally separated sloughs, sawgrass ridges and tree islands. The Floccometer will measure floc movement and the potential driving forces of floc movement.
Present Day Water Levels (impounded)
---------Predrainage Everglades---------
Moving blue line = water surface
Static brown line = ground surface
Moving blue line = water surface
Static brown line = ground surface
ridgeandslough.org