Monthly monitoring fluorescence data for Florida Bay, Ten Thousand Islands, and Whitewater Bay, in southwest coast of Everglades National Park (FCE) for February 2001 to December 2002

Dissolved organic matter plays an important role in biogeochemical processes in aquatic environments such as elemental cycling, microbial loop energetics, and the transport of materials across landscapes. Since most of N (Greater than 90%) and P (around 90%) is in the organic form in the oligotrophic subtropical Florida Coastal Estuaries (FCES), study of the source and dynamics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the ecosystem is crucial for the better understanding of the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients. FCES are composed of estuaries with distinct regions with different biogeochemical processes. Florida Bay (FB) is a wedge-shaped shallow oligotrophic estuary which lays south of the Everglades, the bottom of which is covered with a dense biomass of seagrass. Whitewater bay (WWB) is a semi-enclosed mangrove estuary with a relatively long residence time, which receives overland freshwater input from the Everglades marshes. Ten thousand Islands (TTI) covers the southwest margin of the Florida Coastal Everglades, which are highly compartmentalized by local geomorphology. The sources of both freshwater and nutrients in FCES are difficult to quantify, owing to the non-point source nature of runoff from the Everglades and the dendritic cross channels in the mangroves. Furthermore, the combination of multiple DOM sources (freshwater marsh vegetation, mangroves, phytoplankton, seagrass, etc.), and the potential seasonal variability of their relative contribution, along with the history of (photo)chemical and microbial diagenetic processing, and complex advective circulation, makes the study of DOM dynamics in FCES particularly difficult using standard schemes of estuarine ecology. Quantitative information of DOM is very useful to investigate the biogeochemical cycling of DOM to a certain degree, however, qualitative information is necessary to better understand the source and dynamics of DOM. Since fluorescence spectroscopic techniques are very sensitive, quick and simple, they have been applied to investigate the fate of DOM in estuaries.