Fifty-Year Retrospective Study of the Ecology of Silver Springs, Florida

摘要

The St Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD), in collaboration with Wetland Solutions Inc. (WSI) and the University of Florida Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (UFDFAS) conducted an evaluation of the ecological health of Silver Springs located in Marion County, Florida. The field work was conducted from late 2003 through early 2005. This effort was funded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) as part of the Florida Springs Initiative. This Fifty-Year Retrospective Study of the Ecology of Silver Springs was intended to provide an assessment of land use and water quality changes in Silver Springs and a development of cause and effect relationships, if any, to the springs' ecology. The scope of this study was to review and summarize the data that are currently available for the upper 0.75 miles (1,200 m) of the Silver River, collect additional data as needed for comparison to historical data, and develop linkages between spring shed land use changes and the ecology of Silver Springs. This study was explicitly limited in spatial extent to the upper 1,200 m of the Silver Springs run beginning at the Main Spring Boil (Mammoth Spring, Figure ES-1). This area includes all of the major spring boils and was the focus of the work conducted by Dr. Howard T. Odum and Dr. Robert L. Knight for their biological and ecosystem metabolism studies of the 1950s and 1970s, respectively.