Everglades 4

Joel Trexler has been our guide. Expect a lot more on this. Apologies for the raw notes here.

Wood storks--endangered

Ridges longer than they are wide
Tear drop shaped tree islands
Because of water flow
Federal initiative zeroing in on recovering water flow because that has cascading effects
Don't want to lose drinking water
Dropping water table in a strangely dry year got the ecologists in trouble
Pushback against the sparrow management because Indians want tourists to hunt: need tree islands
Snails that get really big, apple snails
Kite specializes in eating them
Limpkin with a long bill also eats them

Floating mats of algae
Sinks down at night
Floats up in the day
"scum" in ponds on campus not aesthetically pleasing but ecologically important
Periphytin
Bladderwort carnivorous
We're in the wettest ie longest hydroperiod part

We have 1/8 of nesting wading birds historically
This part of FL has only been out of the water for 5000 years

Oolitic banks and substrates
Limestone platform when sea level dropped
Filtering process and accumulation process of species
Peninsula effect: lower diversity as you go down

Shorter list of species here than just north of lake Okochobee

Water beetle with paddle like feet for swimming

The joy of looking into clear water
Seeing the weeds

Environmental economics: Joel interested in this through a particular economist
You can put a value on eg tourist dollars per wading bird
Large mouthed bass: how to out a value on that
The economist Joel is talking about is a correlationist -- nature only has value via humans