Restoring the Everglades

The Everglades is valued for its world-class biodiversity and recreational values, and its supply of potable freshwater to inhabitants of southeast Florida.  Its densely vegetated marsh and tree islands habitats interspersed with well-connected deepwater sloughs maintain pathways for fish migration and feeding areas for its abundant populations of wading birds.  A century of water management substantially diminished the supply of freshwater and degraded water quality.  There is increasing recognition that, with expected land use and climate change, managers may not be able to restore all of the former flow that created the Everglades. Consequently, Everglades restoration is an evolving design that is being adaptively managed to restore enough flow to protect key ecological services. Dr. Harvey will discuss how the Everglades came to be and what factors caused degradation, how flow restoration can be prototyped and made more effective, and the likely outcomes across a spectrum of restoration options.

Speaker: Jud Harvey, Senior Scientist, National Research Program, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston 

For more information, go to:

“Everglades Flowing Again – Experimentally”, USGS Top Story, November 4, 2014 

“In the Everglades, Multi-year Flow Experiment Could Inform Restoration”, Environmental Monitor November 20, 2014 

“This Week at Interior”, YouTube channel, November 7, 2014