USGS Biological Science for Florida, the Sunshine State

From a U.S. Geological Survey fact sheet, August 2017.

Florida's sunshine and natural resources underpin its economy. More than 100 million tourists visit its beaches, wetlands, forests, seas, lakes and rivers, generating billions of dollars and supporting more than a million jobs. The state is home to several thousand kinds of freshwater and marine fish, mammals, birds and other wildlife that people watch, hunt and fish, or that provide valuable ecological services, and its fertile soils and fresh water support farming and forestry worth more than $8 billion a year.

The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area — the Department of the Interior's biological research arm — provides science to help Florida manage and conserve its living resources and the ecosystems they depend on.

Sea turtles

Sea turtles are charismatic, and they also help keep Florida's coral reefs and seagrass healthy, which matters for tourism and fisheries. Five protected species nest on Florida's beaches: loggerhead, green, leatherback, Kemp's ridley and hawksbill. USGS scientists track them with modern technology to learn where they live, migrate and feed; managers use the results to judge how well marine protected areas work and to plan management, especially where visitors are many. USGS research showed that protected sites in Dry Tortugas National Park and the surrounding Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary are important to green sea turtles.

Pythons and tegus

Burmese pythons and Argentine black and white tegus came to Florida from different continents, but both are large, unwelcome, a threat to native wildlife and pets, and hard to manage. Florida considers the Burmese python a species of high environmental, economic and social concern. The USGS helps develop genetic tools and tracking technology to detect the reptiles early and map their spread, and state and federal managers use the results in programmes to remove them.

USGS researchers with a Burmese python. USGS.

Invasive fish

More than 500 non-native fish and wildlife species have been seen in Florida.

• Fish Slam: the USGS and Florida created the Florida Non-Native Fish Action Alliance, a group of agencies, universities and nonprofit organisations that twice a year brings fish experts together in South Florida for a two-day hunt for non-native and invasive freshwater fish, finding newly introduced species and tracking the spread of established ones. In 2017 the crew found 13 non-native fish species in Big Cypress National Preserve, one of them never recorded there before.
• Lionfish: these predators harm reefs by eating native fish and invertebrates and competing with native predators. Managers can forecast their spread using life-history and sighting data from the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database.

The Fish Slam crew searching for non-native fish. USGS.

Harmful algal blooms

Too many nutrients, combined with the right physical conditions, let blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) form harmful blooms. Large blooms can spread from lakes through waterways to estuaries and beaches, leaving green slime, less oxygen for aquatic life, health hazards and disruption to water-based activities. The USGS monitors water quality and bloom organisms to help South Florida's water managers anticipate when, where and how badly blooms will strike, and documented the 2016 bloom in Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie estuary to guide the response.

Manatees

The West Indian manatee, Florida's state marine mammal, helps make the state a top tourist destination. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to move it from endangered to threatened drew on joint analyses by USGS and Florida scientists. Long-term USGS study of its life history, population and ecology has helped managers restore degraded habitat, reduce boat collisions and limit other harm, in Florida and across its range. With partners, the USGS monitors manatees using photographs of propeller scars on more than 4,200 individual animals.

The Everglades

The Everglades, a unique subtropical wetland, anchor South Florida's tourism, outdoor recreation and farming. In 2016 almost one million visitors spent an estimated $91 million in and around Everglades National Park, and watchable wildlife such as alligators and wading birds brings the state about $3 billion a year.

Florida's priority is to restore the quality and flow of water to the Everglades while keeping flood control and water supply for more than 7 million people. Altered water patterns have cut wading bird numbers across the Everglades by about 90 percent since the turn of the 20th century. In this slow, shallow "River of Grass", small differences in depth matter greatly, so precise tools are essential: the USGS Everglades Depth Estimation Network provides real-time water depths to track how the Everglades respond to hydrologic change and guide restoration, and with depth and species data, managers can simulate the effects of different strategies on species of concern.

Sources

• U.S. Geological Survey, Biological and Ecological Science for Florida — "The Sunshine State", Fact Sheet 2017–3066, August 2017. https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20173066 — the introduction, the sidebars and two USGS photographs recovered from the PDF.
• The fact sheet's other pictures are credited to iStock and are not reproduced.
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.