Dr. Steve Davis, chief science officer with the Everglades Foundation joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the importance of the Everglades.
Despite the rains we’ve been seeing, there are still serious drought conditions.
Davis said, “Actually the latest drought classification came out this morning, and we are still in an extreme drought. So it’s not just a single, couple days of rain event that will alleviate these problems, and it really speaks to how drought develops over time. So this is not something that just happened this dry season. It’s something that accumulates, a rainfall deficit that accumulates over longer periods of time. In fact, if you go back to this week last year, South Florida was in a severe drought, so because we didn’t get a banner wet season, we’re still in that deficit over that period of time, and the Everglades ecosystem, and certainly Florida Bay expresses the outcome of that.”
A recent report said in a land of water, we’re running on empty.
Davis said, “We’re blessed, in average years, with four to five feet of rainfall, we know that much of that comes during our wet season, about 75% of that comes during our wet season. So if we have a below average dry season and a below average rainy season, it puts us in the situation where we are because it’s warm, we have a lot of sunny days. And you think of our water budget in South Florida like a bank account. We’ve got water coming into the account from rainfall, but we have a lot of water going back out paying bills to the atmosphere as that water evaporates, and so when we don’t have rainfall, that usually means we have a lot of cloud free days, and so that water then evaporates back out and puts us in this deficit situation.”
The overall health of the Everglades affects its ability to store the water that’s needed.
Davis said, “Think of the Everglades as this massive water management system for South Florida. It receives that rainfall. It helps us to convey that not only south into Florida Bay, the estuary the Everglades, but also it flows downward into the aquifer which provides us our water supplies. So having water is essential to continue to drive that and because the Everglades is disconnected from Lake Okeechobee, we don’t have that subsidy of water from the north, which was the historic part of the watershed, and so that’s why, really, Everglades restoration is so essential, because restoration provides us the capacity to build storage that allows us to reconnect Lake Okeechobee back to the south. That’s the key to restoration, not only of the Everglades, but also to Florida Bay. That is the final recipient of that fresh water.”
Florida Bay needs to be healthy as well.
Davis said, “Florida Bay is this incredible shallow sea grass dominated estuary. Guides and clients take advantage of that on a daily basis. But when we don’t have rainfall, that means we’re getting a lot of evaporation off the Bay when no fresh water is coming in from the Everglades and there’s not a lot of title exchange throughout the Bay. And so that leads to the accumulation of salt, ultimately to hyper salinity, which can become detrimental to the health of the habitats and to the recreational fish that are very desirable and help to drive the economy in the Florida Keys. So it really is a troubling situation when we don’t have sufficient rainfall. But again, going back to restoration, that’s what builds the capacity to store water when we do have it, and then we can draw from that storage when it’s needed most during these periods of drought.”
The drought can also cause fires.
Davis said, “Fire is a natural part of the Everglades ecosystem, whether Big Cypress, the River of Grass, these are systems that naturally burn, and it’s largely because we have natural sources of ignition, lightning. When we have cold fronts pass through, when we get into the wet season, where there’s a lot of convection and lightning strikes from that, vegetation will naturally burn. But when we experience severe drought, and in this year extreme drought, these are different classifications. That means, not only is the vegetation prone to burning, but in many cases, the understory and in some areas, the soils themselves will be vulnerable to burning, and those are the really devastating fires that we see during drought years. That’s what we’ve been seeing across the western Everglades this year, and they’re obviously very difficult to contain when there’s not sufficient water supplies and wet landscapes around, so these are the years where we really experience the severe fires on the order of tens of thousands of acres. Let’s just hope that we get more rain for the balance of this dry season. And then let’s hope also that our wet season has an average start time which is usually around mid May.”
Would one season of regularity as far as rainfall goes correct what has happened with the current drought conditions?
Davis said, “An average rainfall year would take us longer to get out of a drought state. Again, there are classifications of that, but ideally we would like to see a wet start to the beginning of the wet season. The more rainfall we can get over the next six to eight months will really help to get us out of this drought condition. And again, this goes back to early 2025. We were in a severe drought condition across South Florida, and we’re still trying to work our way out of that.”
What is the Everglades Foundation’s role in all of this?
David said, “Our mission is restoration and protection of the Everglades. We are really the science based voice for this ecosystem, and we work with a variety of groups. We have an education program K through 12. We also work with groups in the Keys, the fishing guides, we regularly communicate with on the health of the ecosystem and the importance of these restoration projects and protecting places like Florida Bay. We know that Everglades restoration is working, and over the past 17 years that I’ve been with this organization, I’ve seen us advance these projects to the point where we are beginning to see benefits on the ground, both environmentally and in terms of just protecting our water. But we also know through economic study that these projects are worth it. Everglades restoration, it pays a four to one return on investment, and it protects a trillion dollar asset to the state of Florida.”
For more information, click here: https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/