Preface

In the late 1960s, I worked as a graduate teaching assistant in plant ecology for the late Dr. John Henry Davis at the University of Florida. On one of our visits to the Everglades, he mentioned to me that he had been studying problems of the Everglades since the early 1930s, and that rapid growth in Florida, unless checked, was about to doom the Everglades. He hoped his vegetation survey of the Everglades and his vegetation map could someday be used to help restore the Everglades to some semblance of what it had been prior to the turn of the century. These long-forgotten discussions with Dr. Davis were rekindled when, during a wetland conference in Orlando, Florida in the late 1980s, I was asked what might be responsible for the reported massive invasion of cattails that had been noted during the past decade in the Everglades. Several hypotheses were presented at the meeting, including some preliminary data on the significant inputs of nutrients from agricultural lands and Lake Okeechobee to the north. The shifts in the hydrologic conditions and flow patterns of the existing Everglades were also mentioned. Because of the extensive work on phosphorus and nutrient retention then being done at the Duke University Wetland Center, I was asked in early 1989 to do a preliminary survey and analysis of the ecological status of the Everglades. From this early work, carried out by Dr. Chris Craft and myself, it was apparent that the Everglades had undergone radical changes in both water flow and water quality since my early visits to the Everglades in the late 1960s. This led us to develop and focus our research on three key questions. (1) What are the effects of increased nutrient and water inputs on the native plant and animal communities? (2) What is the long-term nutrient storage capacity of the Everglades? (3) How can water management in the Everglades be improved to maintain the natural communities? Our early studies showed that the multipurpose management objectives that had been maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the South Florida Water Management District, and the State of Florida since the 1950s had resulted in major alterations in hydrologic and nutrient regimes throughout the Everglades. Moreover, the long-term ecological effects of the changes in hydroperiod and increased nutrient loadings during the past three decades have not been quantified under experimental conditions. While numerous reports on water monitoring and several excellent volumes on the Everglades regarding the ecological effects have been published