Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 21
Modelling the Everglades Ecosystem
Fred Jopp and Donald L. DeAngelis
Abstract The Everglades represent a delicate ecosystem in Southern Florida and is
the largest sub-tropical wetland system in the USA. It provides home for a wide
variety of unique biodiversity and wildlife. Due to its vicinity to human settlements,
the Everglades have been under threat since the beginning of the twentieth century.
With the dangers of Global Change on the horizon, this pressure will increase in the
near future. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) is a major
environmental restoration effort, which is under way and will profoundly affect the
Everglades and its neighbouring ecosystems in southern Florida. In the CERP,
ecological modelling plays a central role for science-based decision making. In this
paper, we introduce the general strategy of modelling for the purpose of ecosystem
restoration. We also present two special modelling frameworks and show how they
are being used for ecosystem and population-level modelling to help in the planning
and evaluation of Everglades restoration.
21.1 The Threatened Ecosystem of the Everglades
The subtropical wetlands of the Everglades are located in southern Florida in the
United States (see Fig. 21.1 ), and extend over an area of ca. 6,100 km 2 .Itisa
delicate ecosystem that comprises the largest subtropical wilderness in the U.S. and
provides habitat to a unique compilation of biodiversity. Many threatened species,
like the Florida Panther, the American Crocodile, and the greatest diversity of
wading birds in Northern America, contribute to this local assemblage of species.
Because it lies in the vicinity of large human settlements in southern Florida, the
integrity of the Everglades faced increasing threats during the twentieth century.
After catastrophic floods in the 1940s a regional management plan, the Central and
Southern Florida Project for Flood Control and Other Purposes, was set up with the
following objectives: to control the hydrology and possible flood events, to provide
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