Groundwater-Surface Water Interactions and Relation to Water Quality in the Everglades

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 data sets are available for this project. The Northern Everglades Research Site and Sample Information data set contains a summary of the site locations, data types, and measurement periods in ENR, WCA2A, and WCA2B. The Seepage Meters Site and Sample Information data set 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.