Florida Cooperative Geologic Mapping Project

This project was designed to provide the framework for understanding (1) ecosystem variability and change prior to and during human development of South Florida (i.e., the detailed ecosystem history over the last 200 years, differentiating natural variability from man-made change) and (2) the resource distribution (primarily water and phosphate) in the subsurface of Florida (i.e., the detailed geology of constraining and resource units).

The overall strategy is is to:
1. Sample modern environments throughout the Greater Everglades Ecosystem to understand the present ecosystem and locate undisturbed shallow sediment cores to analyze ecosystem variability and change over the last few hundred years.

2. Analyze deep cores for sedimentology, diagenesis, biostratigraphy, paleoecology, and chemostratigraphy in transects across the southern Florida Peninsula to better understand the factors controlling ground water movement and to define aquifer characteristics. In order to understand the role of facies relationships and genetic depositional units in determining groundwater flow, the distribution and abundance of micro mollusks, foraminifers, dinocysts, ostracodes, pollen and spores, and charcoal will be analyzed, and strontium isotopes will be used for geochronology.