Everglades Hydrology and Water Quality Data

At present there are few reliable estimates of hydrologic fluxes between groundwater and surface water in the Everglades. This gap in hydrological investigations not only leaves the water budget of the Everglades uncertain, it also hampers progress in understanding the processes that determine mobility and transformation of contaminants, such as mercury, sulfate and nutrients. The objective of this project is to quantify hydrologic exchange fluxes between groundwater and surface water and its effects on transport of contaminants in the Everglades. The research furthermore relates surface water and ground water interactions to past, present, and proposed management of surface-water levels and flows in the Everglades. The principal research sites are the Everglades Nutrient Removal Project (ENR), Water Conservation Area 2A (WCA-2A), and the freshwater wetlands of Everglades National Park. Results are being used to quantify ground-water exchange with surface flow, and to quantify the enhancement of chemical transformations of contaminants during transport across the interface between surface water and ground water. Two hydrology and water quality datasets are available for this project. The Northern Everglades Research Site and Sample Information dataset contains a summary of the site locations, data types, and measurement periods in ENR, WCA2A, and WCA2B. The Seepage Meters Site and Sample Information dataset contains vertical fluxes across wetland peat surface measured by seepage meters at research sites in ENR, WCA2A, WCA2B, and WCA3A. Additional data can be found in the appendices of the Open-File Reports 00-168 and 00-483.

For restoration of the Everglades to succeed there must be comprehensive knowledge about physical, chemical, and biological processes throughout the system. A key measure of success in the Everglades is the improvement or protection of water quality under changing hydrologic conditions. Although there is a basic understanding of how interactions between groundwater and surface water will affect water budgets under restoration, there is only a rudimentary understanding of how interactions between groundwater and surface water will affect water quality. Only field-oriented research and modeling can determine whether interactions between groundwater and surface water are currently storing pollutants in groundwater, how long those pollutants are likely to be stored in the aquifer, and under what changing management conditions associated with restoration will those pollutants be returned into the surface water system.