RECOVER MAP 3.1.4.4 Ridge and Slough Landscape Sustainability - Flow monitoring

The ridge and slough habitat is central to the Everglades landscape—both ecologically and literally—and the restoration of degraded ridge and slough features is a central goal of CERP. It is critical that we develop an understanding of the dynamics of ridge and slough landscapes under different water flow regimes in order to detect changes in these systems that may result from restoration activities. This study will build upon research supported by the Everglades National Park and will further develop and refine the methods necessary to monitor and detect change in water velocities and bulk water flow in ridge and slough landscapes.
The objective of this work is to conduct flow studies that will measure velocity and water depths within at three Shark River Slough (SRS) sites that are expected to be affected by CERP in the near future. This information will be used to link local velocity and flow regimes to inflow structures and landscape scale sheet flow estimates.

The primary objective of this work is to conduct flow studies that will measure velocity and water depths at three Shark River Slough (SRS) sites. One site is located a few kilometers south of the future 2 mile Tamiami Bridge (just east of the L-67E canal). It is hypothesized that this location will experience substantially higher rates of water flow, deeper water, and possibly longer hydroperiods after removal of the Tamiami Trail levee. The second site is located at roughly the same distance from Tamiami Trail but its location is considerably east of the future bridge and levee removal and will serve as a “bridge reference site”. These sites were chosen to provide two simultaneous experimental designs for detecting change: 1) A traditional “experimental versus reference” statistical analysis, and; 2) a Before-After Control Impact (BACI) statistical analysis. The third site is further down SRS, southeast of the Shark Valley Tower. The measurements at this site will integrate the hydrologic and ecological effects of both the Tamiami Bridge levee removal and the existing S12 structures across a broad ridge and slough landscape