Everglades [1] ( eng. Everglades , also Florida Everglades; literally "eternal swamps", "swampy lowland") is a special tropical natural territorial complex occupying the southern quarter of the Florida Peninsula , in the territory of the same US state. A significant part of the region has already been influenced by human activities ( drainage of wetlands for agricultural needs, mass housing development). To preserve untouched biocenoses, a part of the region in 1947 by the US government was given over to the Everglades National Park , the area of which in 1977 was about 566,796 ha. The main natural areas of the Everglades: tropical forests in the north, mangroves along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and swamps covered with a thorny cladium (“grass-saw”).
Content
Feature
As a biome, the Everglades is a large tropical swamp that occupies a flat lowland (about 1-2 meters above sea level) terrain in the southern quarter of the US state of Florida , primarily in Monroe , Collier , Palm Beach , Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The terrain has a weak inclination towards the south-east with a weak current, fed by the fresh waters of the Kissimi River, which flows along the internal axis of the peninsula from north to south.
Zoning
There are several areas in the Everglades:
- Lake Okeechobee ;
- the marshy Everglades lowland covered with cladium ;
- A large cypress swamp , covered with swamp cypress and Spanish moss ;
- raised sandy beach and beaches of the Atlantic Ocean ;
- " Ten Thousand Islands " swampy islands and estuaries along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico ;
- shoals and coastal spits of Florida Bay .
Household
Although most of the Everglades (about 55%) actually suffered from human activities in the central and southern part of Florida, with a population of about 20 million people, the natural ecosystem is still preserved in some places south of the city of Orlando , in the Kissimo River basin. Kissimi originates in the Taylor Valley and Phishing, as well as in the Nabbin swamp and flows into Lake Okeechobi , a large (1,890 km²), but rather shallow (about 3 m deep) freshwater lake . Lake Okeechobi during the flood period floods the entire territory of the Euglades, forming a reservoir up to 60 km wide and up to 160 km long.
Flora and fauna
The fauna of the region is rich mainly in terms of ornithological ( birds ). Of the rare species there are snake kite , American cranberries , pelicans, cormorants, etc. The following rare mammals are protected: manatees , Florida cougar . The previously protected alligators have multiplied so much that they often threaten people and penetrate the pools of residential areas on the outskirts of the swamp. Many amphibians. There are few large mammals in the Everglades swamps because of the distinctive nature of the region's vegetation: cladiums that predominate in open plains have long, narrow, sharp-edged or jagged stems, which, when moving, easily damage the soft tissue of mammals and especially human skin, therefore the main large inhabitants of the plains overgrown with plains are thick-skinned shell tortoises, crocodiles and alligators . There are a lot of crabs in mangrove forests, and sharks come to shallow waters.
Interesting Facts
Fresh water from the Everglades is purified and used to supply the main city of the region, Miami . In addition, the Everglades intersects west-east toll highway called the Valley of Alligators , now part of highway number 75. In addition to the main massif, several isolated Everglades enclaves such as the Miami and New River in the east and the Shark River remain in the South-West.
Notes
- ↑ Everglades // Dictionary of place names of foreign countries / resp. ed. A.M. Komkov . - 3rd ed., Pererab. and add. - M .: Nedra , 1986. - P. 440.
See also
- Everglades Restoration
- Mangroves of Florida