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The Florida Everglades — A Wetlands Ecosystem. The Florida Everglades —
A Wetlands Ecosystem The Everglades, a vast wetlands ...
... ecosystem has suffered. Damaged wetlands cannot provide suitable habitat for the
plants and animals that depend on it for survival. The Florida Everglades ...
... Several hundred years ago, these wetlands covered one-third of ... But the Florida
Everglades is not just a “River of ... it is an important part of our ecosystem. ...
... and downward leakage in south Florida and, with ... favored the expansion of coastal
and freshwater wetlands. ... helped retain freshwater in the Everglades Basin and ...
... they are the most precious form of ecosystem that we ... It also declared that the Florida
Everglades was a Nation ... one of the laws to protect wetlands was section ...
Submitted by curlzndye on April 13, 2005
Category: Science
Words: 2068 | Pages: 9
Views: 237
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The Florida Everglades — A Wetlands Ecosystem
The Everglades, a vast wetlands ecosystem made up of marshes and swamps, begins at Lake Okeechobee, a large lake in the center of Florida, and ends in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay. It is nearly 50 miles across and 110 miles long (Hinrichsen), and when viewed from the air, appears to be miles and miles of shallow water flowing through thick mats of grass. This perception has earned it the name “River of Grass”. Although it does flow like a river, the flow is so incredibly slow that, from a distance, it doesn’t seem to move at all.
All of the wildlife in the Everglades is totally dependent on the cycling of water. One example of this dependence is the feeding relationship between the snail kite (an endangered bird species), and the apple snail (a freshwater mollusk the size of a golf ball) (Talley). The apple snails reproduce during the rainy season. When water levels are at their highest, they lay thousands of tiny pink eggs on the stalks of marsh grasses. As the water recedes, the snail kites fly all over the Everglades looking for them. Once they find them, they swoop down and use their specialized beaks to pluck the tender snails from their shells. The water cycle and the lives of apple snails and snail kites are intertwined. Snail kites depend on the successful reproduction of apple snails, which is, in turn, affected by the amount of rainfall. Only recently have scientists been able to observe how close this relationship is. When humans drained large areas of the Everglades and converted them to agricultural lands, the population of apple snails decreased sharply. This had a dramatic effect on the snail kite population. In 2003, only 1600 snail kites remained in Florida, the bird\'s only U.S. habitat (Smith). The relationship among humans, snail kites, and apple snails illustrates the delicate balance of nature in an ecosystem. When humans alter the water cycle, they directly...
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