Brooker Creek

Brooker Creek Preserve is by far one of the biggest parks we have taken a trip too. The park encompasses 8700 acres with different trails taking you through different regions of the park. The main objective was look at the different ecosystems, such as high pinelands.

We first started off on a boardwalk that went over the creek along with some flood areas of the hammock/swamp lands. 

Afterwards we started walking on a sandy trail and decided to walk the BlackWater trail, which of course was underwater. In the picture above you can see the canopy layer which dominated by sparse pine trees and a shrub layer of saw palmetto. We also found a cool looking insect.

 The next two pictures show want the trails looked like after a good rain. You can clearly see at least 3 layers in the picture to the right: canopy, understory, and shrub.

Here is a picture of a plant living on another tree in order to get the light and nutrients it needs in order to survive.