Day 3: Life time experience at the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge

^4th March 2014

Location: 26°30′30″N 80°20′00″W , temperature: around 28 °C

Our day started early in the morning to visit the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, which is quite far from Vester marine field station. The goal of the visit was to see and understand “Loxahatchee Impoundment Landscape Assessment” (LILA) project management strategies and its impact on the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, Boynton Beach, Florida. In addition to this goal, my aim was to meet my Professor Brian Benscoter from Florida Atlantic University, Florida.

Experimental setup at LILA

For all of us, it was a great opportunity to see the world’s largest freshwater wetland - the Everglades (6, 900 square kilometers), which underwent many changes over the last few decades due to various anthropogenic influences. Earlier, the “Greater Everglades Ecosystem (GEE)” was 621,597 ha wetlands with emergent sawgrass, ridges, tree islands, and shallow water sloughs. However, due to the construction of drainage canals, development of agriculture, urbanization and reduction of Lake Okeechobee, it disconnected from main source of water and degradation was started.

Sun basking Aligator

Therefore, for the conservation and restoration of Everglades, the LILA project was developed in 2003 at the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, Florida. LILA is a natural experimental model project developed to provide natural experiment grounds for researchers to study Everglade’s ecosystems and help to restore Everglades. Currently, a total area of 75,000 hectares has been assigned for the experiment model development. The experiments under the LILA project mainly include the quantification of the effects of water depth and flow rate on the ridges and sloughs with birds, tree islands, marsh plant communities, marsh fishes and invertebrates, and peat soils. The main aim of the LILA project is to sustain natural hydrological conditions in ridges and sloughs at Everglades and to maintain a healthy Everglades ecosystem.

Apple snail

Under this project, various habitats were created to mimic the actual Everglade’s natural ecosystem in the Refuge. Main habitats constructed were sloughs, ridges, tree islands and alligator holes. Within each habitat four enclosed eight hectares macrocosms were constructed, having characteristics of natural Everglades landscape with controlled hydrology flow rate upto 5 cm/sec. Sloughs and ridges were constructed with the purpose to study the influence of deep-water flow and micro topography on the density, distribution and movement of aquatic animals especially small fishes. Whereas, mimicking tree islands was needed because in Everglades, tree islands are located at the highest elevation and provide dry habitats for the growth of woody vegetation. Although, tree islands occupy very small area, it is highly important for the survival of many aquatic, terrestrial flora and fauna.

This visit was a fruitful visit as we got opportunities to understand a unique kind of research and

Orange sulphur (Colias eurtheme)

development practice and associated constraints and outcomes.  The LILA showed an example of the large-scale model of everglades with an unique design of its kind. Various experiments conducted in the LILA have been able to provide more credible and informed information about Everglade's hydrology, ecology and biodiversity. Since it takes a very long period to see actual impacts of implemented activities in natural systems, current learningfrom LILA shows a high potential to be one of the most important steps for a successful restoration of Everglades. Lesson learned and experiments performed in the LILA project, has now also been implemented in Everglades and providing important role for the restoration of Everglades. 

Eco boat ride

Those implemented activities includes GIS database system, engineered pumps and canals to increase the velocity of water in the Everglades to maintain sloughs and ridges structures, Utilization of geochemical tracers to study the budget of water, documentation of the influence of hydrodynamics (ground and surface water) on the newly planted trees in the tree islands, passive integrated transponder (PIT) is now highly adapted method and five Storm water Treatment Areas (STAs) have been setup to restore and remove excess phosphorus concentration to eliminate negative impact of phosphorus on vegetation. Hopefully In the near future, we will be able to see various experiments now being tested in the LILA to be implemented in Everglades and associated implications.Simultaneously, many native and exotic fish species were observed such as eastern mosquito fish (Gambusia holbrooki), flag fish (Jordanella floridae), Mayan cichlid (Cichlasoma urophthalmus), Bluefin killifish (Nothobranchius rachovi),Blue spotted sunfish (Enneacanthus gloriosus) and dollarsunfish (Lepomis marginatus). The visit would have been incomplete without birds and alligators watching. Most fascinating avian species observed were Black vulture (Coragyps atratus), turkey vulture and anhinga posing on the ground for us. Unfortunately, I missed the swamp walk as I was having a meeting with Professor Brian Benscoter at that time.The collection of soil samples from LILA was also an equally challenging task. Then after we went for airboat ride to the other parts of the reserve. The most exciting part about the airboat ride was to observe Everglade's endangered wildlife closely. The ride also provided a thrilling experience of seeing many alligators of different sizes ranging from 2 feet to 15 feet. Simultaneously, our tour guide made that experience more exciting as he wanted to saw us more and more diversity. However, I was also focusing on the plant diversity during ride, I was able to  recognise Willow (Salix alba), Bowrush and Sawgrass
.