CW4 1592

From Environmental Technology

Can the Everglades Survive?

a. Water management is the critical issue for the Everglades. The dry season is from December to April when the water levels gradually drop. The wet season begins in May. The summer landscape is almost completely covered with water while the winter landscape does not have any more than spotted pools of water.

b. The habitats found in the Everglades include marine/estuary, mangroves, coastal prarie, freshwater marl prarie, freshwater slough, cypress, hardwood hammocks, and pinelands.

c.

d. A manatee is a marine mammal that grows to 1,000 pounds and roams the U.S. coastal waters from Louisiana to Virginia. They are adapted to the tropics and in the winter they go to warm waters such as Florida Bay. They eat the abundant sea grasses and aquatic plants of the bay. They eat 10 to 15 percent of their body fat each day. The manatee's problems are human related. The most critical problem for manatees are boating accidents. They are suffering from a destruction of habitat. The establishment of automatic locks on dams which can harm them is another difficulty the manatees are facing.