Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge Data

The Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (LOX) is a water-dominated ecosystem that is susceptible to water-quality impacts. A comprehensive analysis of historical water-quality and ancillary data is needed to direct the restoration of the Everglades and the adoption of water-quality standards in LOX because of its designation as Outstanding Florida Waters.

Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (LOX) maintains a separate networks of hydrologic monitoring stations (hydrostations) for measuring the stage and quality of surface water throughout the units. The data collected at these sites provides a historical baseline for assessing hydrologic conditions and making a wide range of management decisions (both internally and externally). Surface-water stage data is relatively straight-forward to analyze, both in real time and relative to historic conditions, and has typically been conducted by in-house hydrology staff at both units. Analysis of surface water-quality data is generally regarded as being more complex because of the subtleness of trends, absence of continuous data, and dependence on surface water depth and season. Collection and analysis of water-quality samples at LOX was done under cooperative agreements with the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). Under these agreements, the Park Service collects the samples in the field and the SFWMD provides sampling equipment and laboratory analyses. Water-quality data have been collected at 14 internal marsh sites in LOX by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for over 10 years. These samples have been analyzed by SFWMD laboratory. In 2000, a study was begun by the U.S. Geological Survey to gather, edit, and interpret selected water-quality data from a variety of sources to improve the understanding of changes in water-quality in areas impacted by human activities or in more remote and relatively unimpacted areas of the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. The study area was extended into LOX in 2003.