debor042

  This post was written by guest blogger Alexandra Serna, a post-doctoral researcher in the FIU Freshwater Biogeochemistry Lab ( http://www2.fiu.edu/~fwbgchem/ ) , about some of her work on tree islands and carbon dynamics in the Everglades.  ___________________________________________________________________________ A few weeks ago, I attended the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America Annual Meetings in Tampa, FL. What a huge conference! My colleagues and I presented our most recent data on tree island Carbon (C) dynamics. Tree islands are one of the most prominent landscape features of the Everglades system. Despite their importance, hydrologic modifications to the system have greatly altered the number, size, and distribution of tree islands in the Everglades. The original peat-accreting system stored large quantities of soil C and was a sink for atmospheric CO2. Hydrologic manipulation and wide-spread drainage h...

Mike Bush is a guest blogger and a PhD student in the Trexler aquatic ecology lab at FIU ( http://faculty.fiu.edu/~trexlerj/ ).  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                 Everglades restoration can come in many forms, from ensuring that water heading south through the Everglades Agricultural Area is stripped of excess nutrients before it hits the more natural areas of the Everglades to shuffling around huge amounts of water under Alligator Alley into Fakahatchee Strand. Perhaps no project is as ambitious as the Water Conservation Area 3A Decompartmentalization and Sheetflow Enhancement Project (we just refer to it as “DPM” or “Decomp” for short, thank goodness). DPM is a multifaceted project, with major involvement by the South Florida Water Management District and the US Army Corps of Engineers, that focuses on removing lev...

This guest post was written by James Stroud, Ph. D. student in Dr.  K en Feeley's  lab at Florida International University.  He is a regular blogger on the Feeley lab blog  upwithclimate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- South Florida is a wild place for lizards. And at the moment, as the region’s most abundant native lizard, life sucks for the American green anole Anolis carolinensis . In the recent past a wealth of invasions have occurred from exotic Caribbean Anolis leading to the establishment of up to 10 non-native species around the Miami area, annually creeping further outwards towards the Everglades. The effect of congenerics on American green anoles has been well studied; the presence of an ecologically similar competitor – such as the now widespread Cuban brown anole Anolis sagrei (Fig. 2) – has forced them higher up into the trees and off the ground. Fig 1. Ran...

This guest post was written by Phil Matich, a graduate researcher in Dr. Mike Heithaus' lab at Florida International University.  _________________________________________________________________________   We just got back from an amazing trip in August!   As always, we left early in the morning and were fortunate enough to catch the tail end of the Perseid meteor shower as we drove to the boat ramp.   On our way to the field site we saw the sun rise over the water and the mangroves, and then got right to work catching sharks.   On the first live, we caught two sharks, 79 and 85 cm total length, and surgically implanted the smaller individual with an acoustic transmitter so that we could track its movements.   Surprisingly, the larger shark was an individual we had caught and tagged in July, and is one of the first sharks we’ve recaptured in the last three years!   After only a month, the shark has grown 2 cm and gained 1 kg in body mass; the scar fr...