|Session IV: Wetlands ||Abstract #: 97406 SOIL-BASED ESTIMATION
OF PRE-DRAINAGE (CA. 1850) EVERGLADES LANDSCAPES AND THEIR
HYDROLOGY Environmental Defense Fund/South Florida Water
Management District Hydrologic Systems Modeling Div., SFWMD West
Palm Beach, FL 33416 Intensive synoptic studies from the 1940s
provide the best available picture of the Everglades as a whole.
Accurately portraying the system as it was then, these studies
also reflect any alterations caused by thirty years of canal
drainage. In the present research we developed a picture of the
landscapes -- the soils, hydrology, topography and vegetation --
present prior to drainage. Development of this picture included
two aspects: characterization of the landscapes and
determination of their spatial extents. Soil was assumed to be
the most stable aspect of each landscape. A comprehensive soil
map of the Everglades published in 1948 therefore formed the
basis for estimating spatial extents. Hindcasting of the 1948
soil map and characterization of