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I’ve lived on this piece of property for over thirty years…I’ve seen it’s evolution…some could say devolution…..

In earlier posts…I’ve spoken about the different categorizations of various Swamps…or to be more-socially acceptable…various “Wet Lands”…..

Potatoes………….potatoes…..

…..(that still loses something in print)…..

On closer evaluation I think our swamp has been struggling from a “Cypress Wetlands” swamp to a “Hydric Hammock”…..

And now…it’s somewhere in between…..

*****(Swamp Categorizations)*****

*****(Wetlands Management in Florida)*****

*****(More Wetlands Information)*****

My older daughter suggested this topic for a post…I was a little hesitant at first…because I thought it would mean I needed to do research and be scientific…..

…..or God forbid…accurate…..

…..but…that’s never stopped me before…..

…..so I decided…..

Why not?…I’ll just wing it…..

I have seen this land change quite a bit over the years…..

…..when we moved here in the early 90’s…the swamp in the back wasn’t very wet at all…..

…..it was overgrown and almost impossible to get through without a machete…..

…..there was a conflict of tree types too…..

Pines…oaks…lots of scrub and palmettos…right alongside cypress…with their knees poking up everywhere…..

…..then because of controversial pumping of the potable aquifer water beneath us…to supply some of the very (overly) developed counties nearby (who have salt-water intrusion in their aquifer)…..

*****(What’s an Aquifer?)*****

…..I watched the back pasture become even drier…along with the dying and falling of the cypress trees…but the pine trees stayed and the oaks thrived…..

…..the wild iris disappeared and a grass-base started to form…..

About this time we discovered that some shallow sink holes had developed under our house (who knows about the development of any deeper bigger ones)…..

…..sometimes we could “feel” the galloping horses in the pasture…echoing under the slab of our house(?)…..

I mean…it’s not rocket science…too much water was being artificially pumped from beneath us…and it was leaving a void…..

…..(I do recall telling an overly-eager/overly-lecturing hydrologist  “not to let our front gate slap her in the ass on the way out”)…(things did get a bit contentious)…..

Then the “powers-that-be” were forced to change their pumping habits…and they did some dramatic (VERY unnatural) ground excavating up-stream from us(?)…..

…..and voilà the above ground water levels in the back pasture started to rise…(with regularity & uniformity)…(sometimes within twenty minutes?)…(almost like it was on a timer)…..

…..the pine trees started to die off (because of their wet feet)…and the over-all ground vegetation started to change back again from grass to ferns & bracken & swamp growth…..

As I’d spoken about in a previous post…I was probably ill-advised to wade into chest-deep water in the back corner of the pasture…(***pictured above in the totally dry pasture***)…..

…..but that shows how much water has been artificially pumped back there…..

My daughter pointed out the root base of the plant coverage that is now re-growing…it’s wider & deeper…holding the soil from further erosion…..

The once impenetrable swamp is gone…the pine trees are gone (it’s now too wet)…but the cypress trees are almost totally gone too (because of their death from too little water from over-pumping)…..

…..maybe our species doesn’t have the best of plans…maybe we should leave well enough alone…..

…..less invasive would be nice…..

But Mother Nature is making a valiant effort to regain and re-nourish her original swamp…and bring it back to her original intentions…..

 

 

 

 

#mothernature #motherearth #greenpeace #floridanaquifer #waterconservation

#wetlands #wetlandsconservation #swfwmd #southwestfloridawatermanagementdistrict #cypresstrees