Posted on 08/26/2007 3:11:55 AM PDT by jsh3180
The damage wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005 spelled the end of the venerable Flamingo Lodge at Everglades National Park. Now as park officials consider options for a replacement, they have to factor in more than just the dangers of inundation from a storm surge.
On the northern edge of Florida Bay, Flamingo, and other vast tracts of the 1.5-million-acre park, are threatened by global warming-induced sea level rise, officials say. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year estimated that oceans will rise between 7 inches and 23 inches over the course of this century as glaciers melt and warming sea water expands.
At Everglades National Park, officials will have to take measures to protect everything from docks to camp sites to permanent accommodations, including whatever replaces Flamingo Lodge.
"We have to be ready for storm surge on top of base conditions," Superintendent Dan Kimball said in an interview earlier this month. "We are making sure we have facilities that can cope with a 12- to 15-inch sea level rise."
Preparing facilities for sea level rise, at least, is within the control of the park administration. But as conditions change, the rest of the park will be at the mercy of nature.
Sea levels in South Florida already have risen 9 inches since 1930, according to Dr. Hal Wanless, a University of Miami geologist who has focused much of his research on the coastal systems of the Everglades. That's eight to 10 times faster than any period in the last 2,000 years. The rise already has transformed northwest Cape Sable from a freshwater to saltwater environment.
Freshwater marshes along the northeast edge of Florida Bay also have died, though it is tough to gauge how much of the die-off is due to saltwater inundation and how much has been caused by canals and water diversion practices that have reduced the Everglades' historical freshwater sheet flow into the area, Wanless said.
Because changes at Cape Sable have occurred faster than the system has adapted, huge areas of the cape, which at its tip is the southernmost point in the mainland continental United States, have turned to open water. Mangroves, a hallmark of saltwater wetlands, have not been able to establish themselves.
"There is an unbelievable amount of mud moving around right now on Cape Sable, and it is mainly because of this rise in sea level," Wanless said.
The park service's eye-popping maps show that if the sea level were to rise another 7 inches, considerably more freshwater and dry habitat in the southeast of the park would turn to sea. With a 23-inch rise, more than half of the existing land-based portion of the park would be submerged, including all of Cape Sable, the large majority of western Everglades National Park and all of its southern fringe.
If the change were to occur gradually enough, classic Everglades landscapes, comprising sawgrass prairies and floating lily pads, would be transformed into mangrove-laden saltwater marshes of the type now found along the coast, said Everglades National Park Chief Biologist David Hallac. Bass and other freshwater fish would be squeezed into smaller areas and replaced by saltwater species. And the park's famous wading birds, which find more food in less salty environments, also could be affected.
Worse, the Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel (IPCC) may have been too conservative in its projected sea level rise. Wanless, for one, said even an estimated 23-inch rise is too low.
"I don't really want to knock the IPCC because they have gotten the world to understand global warming," he said. "But the people who model climate, their models aren't able to look at sudden changes."
Sea level rise, Wanless says, is not likely to occur gradually. He and other scientists worry that as Greenland's ice shelf melts and slides into the sea, a tipping point will be reached. Once that happens, the rise will occur exponentially, he said. The result could be seas that are 3 feet to 5 feet higher.
In that case, Everglades saltwater inundation would occur too fast for mangroves to take hold. With about 60 percent of Everglades National Park sitting at 3 feet of elevation or less, the River of Grass would be no more.
"It will be open water with huge amounts of organic decaying mud," Wanless said. "It might be a very productive estuary."
Not giving up
Despite such grim scenarios, park officials and advocates say it is not time to throw in the proverbial towel on the Everglades or its restoration.
"First and foremost, Everglades restoration must be successful to combat climate change," said John Adornato, the South Florida director of the National Parks Conservation Association. "As we put more [fresh]water into Everglades National Park, we will be able to push back saltwater intrusion. By having a healthier ecosystem, there will be more protections in place for sea level rise."
More than 220 restoration projects are planned for the Everglades ecosystem, both inside and outside park boundaries. Sixty of those projects make up the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), a state and federal government partnership signed in 2000.
The restoration seeks to clean the water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee and the nearby sugar fields and to increase the amount of water that is allowed to flow freely through the ecosystem without being diverted to the sea through canals and levies.
Forty-three of the scheduled projects have been completed. Others, including many of the CERP projects, are behind schedule by as much as six years, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released earlier this summer.
The estimated cost of restoration also has risen from $15.4 billion to at least $19.7 billion.
Hallac and Kimball, as Adornato, stress the importance of restoration in staving off sea level rise. As the rise sends saltwater up the Everglades system from the south, restoring freshwater flows from the north could at least mitigate that encroachment, they say.
"Restoration is more important than ever during a time of climate change," said Kimball, who explains that keeping the system healthy also would be a defense against saltwater intrusion into South Florida's freshwater supply.
In addition to pushing for restoration and incorporating sea level rise into facilities plans, Everglades National Park officials have begun monitoring fish and wildlife and their respective habitats inside the park in order to recognize developing trends. The endangered Cape Sable sparrow, for example, no longer resides on Cape Sable, having been chased away in part by rising sea levels, according to a study released in July by the National Parks Conservation Association.
If the situation gets dire enough, the park service might end up relocating endangered species, Kimball said.
Management strategies will vary depending upon how much the sea level actually rises in the coming years, Wanless said.
"In a time of global warming, we have to manage things as very dynamic, evolving environments," he said.
> Sea levels in South Florida already have risen 9 inches since 1930, according to Dr. Hal Wanless, a University of Miami geologist who has focused much of his research on the coastal systems of the Everglades.
That is a provable fact. Accurate measurements have been taken during that entire period.
> That’s eight to 10 times faster than any period in the last 2,000 years.
That is a provable LIE. Sea levels have been rising at a rate averaging 1 foot per century since the end of the last ice age.
The reason why sea level rises are different in different regions is that the LAND level also rises and falls due to the tectonic forces which raise mountains.
We spent a week in this park and I can see no reason not to rebuild the Lodge. It is a wonderfull place for people to experience the bay of Florida.
The new Ranger station is built up to handle a storm surge..the new lodge could be the same way.
This area was hit hard by the storm, but the mangroves along the coast did hold..did their jobs protecting the interior.
Climate changes are a part of life..the East Coast is sinking,,but that hasn’t stopped life.
Weren’t the enviroloons chirping about the Everglades drying up just a few years ago? Now, they’re saying the water is going to come back and they’re still not satisfied......Jeez.
I really thought this was the money statement ... but the further I read .... the convolution became too much.
That is a provable fact.
Actually, it's a crock. Sea levels have risen very little, if any at all, since 1930, much less 9 inches. Even the folks in the Andamon Islands, who have been crying about rising sea levels for years, are not claiming 9 inches.
South Florida may be sinking, and all of the change noted in the article may be attributable to the lower water flows into the Everglades noted in the article.
My money is on the later as the largest factor.
Sea Levels have been rising for at least 5000 years. The rate is between 1 and 3.2 millimeters. Over 77 years, since 1930 means between 3 and 10 inches. I believe that 2mm +/- .2 is accepted as as close to observable measurement that is agreed upon as occurring right now.
> Sea levels have risen very little, if any at all, since 1930, much less 9 inches. Even the folks in the Andamon Islands, who have been crying about rising sea levels for years, are not claiming 9 inches.
As I mentioned in my post, different places show different rates of sea-level change because the ground-level also changes, due to erosion as well as geological factors.
Only since the deployment of GPS satellites has it been possible to track changes in land elevation independently of sea-level shifts. This, of course, gives us an extremely short history of accurate measurements.
If you want to claim that South Florida has NOT experienced a 9 inch sea-level rise in the past 80 years, you should link to measurements taken near that location at reputable weather stations. But I don’t think you want to do that much work.
There is a good deal of evidence of slowly rising sea levels for the past 5000 years or more. The twentieth century was pretty much average as far as sea-level changes go.
“The restoration seeks to clean the water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee and the nearby sugar fields...”
Oh. The sugar fields. I wonder what big sugar lobbied for in this alarmist attack on the taxpayers wallets.
All I have found from USGS sources in recent years is speculation about climate change and disastrous sea level rises. Therefore I tend to discount them entirely. Also, local measurements are of limited usefulness, since sea level is a global phenomonen.
......But I don’t think you want to do that much work.
Since you didn't bother to point me to a reliable web site, I suspect you don't know where to find reliable information. No thanks to you, I found somebody who told me where to look for a reliable source.
Since I have finally found actual data, after many years of seeing only speculation about global warming killing us all, I have to eat me words about sea-level rise.
I've found something else interesting. Several of the local govt web sites complaining about sea-level rise also complain about local subsidence. I haven't yet found a web site with wide-spread shore-line subsidence figures, only local ones from FL, OR and CA.
>>This is too much of a CROCK this early in the morning. I ain’t talking gators either.<<
The tone is crock.
But, he’s right about the sea level rise. The sea in the last century rose about 2 mm (0.0787 inches) per year or about 7 inches in a hundred years so the estimate of 7 inches is for no change while the 23 is for current warming estimates.
Still, the hysterical tone is a crock. Did sea level change cause enormous problems for the last 7 inches? Not much, a little, maybe in very low lying areas and probably caused some beach erosion. Why then should we be hysterical about the next 7 inches?
Now, over the 1,000 years it could become a big deal so its worth studying. That’s why President Reagan established the National Snow and Ice Data Center and they do a report on sea level rise.
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_level.html
The weight of the extra water will force the seabed to lower ending up with the oceans about where they are now.
I read the articles at your link to the NSIDC.
Unfortunately for your premise, there’s a glaring error. Here’s what they say:
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Over the past 100 years, sea level has risen by 1.0 to 2.5 millimeters per year; thus, the contribution from melting small glaciers would be approximately 20 to 30 percent of the total. Climate models based on the current rate of increase in greenhouse gases, however, indicate that sea level will rise at a rate of about two to five times the current rate over the next 100 years from the combined effect of ocean thermal expansion and increased glacier melt (IPCC 2001).
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Of course the fact remains, ever increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does less and less for the greenhouse effect as levels rise. It’s not a linear scale of effect.
And that’s a fact.
>>Unfortunately for your premise, there’s a glaring error. Here’s what they say:<<
My premise is that this is not a crisis -that sea level rise is slow enough that we can study it instead of doing something like Kyoto.
>>Climate models based on the current rate of increase in greenhouse gases, however, indicate that sea level will rise at a rate of about two to five times the current rate over the next 100 years<<
I used a factor of 3.3 because the that’s what the article used. I agree there is a range to the predictions. At three times the rate for last that’s still 30 years before the next 7 inches of sea level rise.
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