Portal:Geography

The geography and ecology of the Everglades involve the complex elements affecting the natural environment throughout the southern region of the U.S. state of Florida. Before drainage, the Everglades was an interwoven mesh of marshes and prairies covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 km²). The Everglades is simultaneously a vast watershed that has historically extended from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles (160 km) south to Florida Bay (around one-third of the southern Florida peninsula), and many interconnected ecosystems within a geographic boundary. It is such a unique meeting of water, land, and climate that the use of either singular or plural to refer to the Everglades is appropriate. When Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote her definitive description of the region in 1947, she used the metaphor "River of Grass" to explain the blending of water and plant life. Although sawgrass and sloughs are the enduring geographical icons of the Everglades, other ecosystems are just as vital, and the borders marking them are subtle or nonexistent. Pinelands and tropical hardwood hammocks are located throughout the sloughs; the trees, rooted in soil inches above the peat, marl, or water, support a variety of wildlife. The oldest and tallest trees are cypresses, whose roots are specially adapted to grow underwater for months at a time. The Big Cypress Swamp is well known for its 500-year-old cypresses, though cypress domes can appear throughout the Everglades. As the fresh water from Lake Okeechobee makes its way to Florida Bay, it meets salt water from the Gulf of Mexico; mangrove forests grow in this transitional zone, providing nursery and nesting conditions for many species of birds, fish, and invertebrates. The marine environment of Florida Bay is also considered part of the Everglades because its sea grasses and aquatic life are attracted to the constant discharge of fresh water.

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• November 1998 – First annual GIS Day
• 8 November 1957 – Renaming of the organization Geographic Institute Agustín Codazzi
• 11 November 1889 – Pierre, South Dakota became capital when South Dakota gained statehood in United States
• 15 November 2007 – Cyclone Sidr struck the southwestern coast of Bangladesh (pictured)

• ...that Raspberry Island (pictured) in the Gulf of Alaska boasts some of the largest Roosevelt elk ever recorded?
• ... that Georgian daba Manglisi has been a mountain resort area for the people of Tbilisi since the 19th century?
• ...that only three of the largest islands of the United States – the Big Island of Hawaii, Kodiak Island, and Puerto Rico – are greater than 3,000 square miles (8,000 km²) in size?

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