Sediment Transport and Saline Intrusion on Cape Sable, Everglades National Park, Florida

Project Investigators: Mark Zucker, Jeff Woods, DeWitt Smith Project Start Date: 2009 End Date: 2011 Recent Funding: (FY10) NPS/USGS Water Quality Partnership Program, (FY09) NPS/USGS Water Quality Partnership Program Data Metadata Publications Related Links

The Cape Sable area has experienced changes due to anthropomorphic effects since the early 1900's. Manmade canals combined with sea level rise, tropical storms, and hurricanes has led to the collapse of the formerly freshwater marsh and negative impacts on native fauna. This project will further document and expand upon the exchange of flow, salinity, and sediment by collecting continuous hydrologic and water quality data along the East Cape Extension Canal, Homestead Canal, and East Side Creek.

Objectives of the project are to:

1. Install and develop index velocity ratings to compute continuous flow to and from Lake Ingraham using acoustic Doppler current meters
2. Conduct a minimum of two synoptic water quality studies per year (i.e. wet and dry season) to collect suspended sediment samples using automatic samplers
3. Collect continuous 15 minute turbidity and acoustic backscatter data and during the water quality synoptic, relate suspended sediment concentrations to the surrogate variables
4. Collect, store, and produce continuous sediment load record using surrogate variables
5. Collect, compute, and publish continuous monitor data on the USGS SOFIA Website

Data

• Cape Sable Water Quality and Suspended Sediment Data (from the data exchange pages)
• South Florida Hydrology Database (from the data exchange pages)

Metadata

• Cape Sable Water Quality and Suspended Sediment Data (data set metadata)
• South Florida Hydrology Database (data set metadata)

Publications

Papers

• Sediment Transport on Cape Sable, Everglades National Park, Florida (from the Proceedings of the Joint Federal Interagency Conference, July 2010)

Reports

• Water-Resources Data for the United States: Water Year 2010 (Water-Data Report WDR-US-2010, Excerpt)
• Water-Resources Data for the United States: Water Year 2011 (Water-Data Report WDR-US-2011, Excerpt)
• Water-Resources Data for the United States: Water Year 2012 (Water-Data Report WDR-US-2012, Excerpt)

Related Links

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Everglades Projects
• Cape Sable Canals Dam Restoration Project, Environmental Assessment / Assessment of Effect - June 2009 (Public Review document)
• Everglades National Park Cape Sable Dams Project Video
• National Park Service / US Geological Survey Partnership Projects in Everglades National Park
• Natural Resources Management Cape Sable Canals NPS Fact Sheet (Available from the U.S. National Park Service website. Note that this is a 3.4 MB PDF file and requires the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader® to be read)