Sawgrass Lake 10/14/2016

Sawgrass Lake

Around 85° and breezy

10/14/2016

This week our class visited Sawgrass Lake, which is an important area for water conservation. Throughout the day we encountered Ibis birds near the shore among floating and submerged plants, bald cypress’ beginning to brown and drop their leaves, holly trees, maple trees, and perennial prim rose all along the boardwalk trail.

As we walked we came across a few fallen trees that had become nurse logs. Usually the tree falls due to the soil beneath the tree becoming wet and loose from rain or flooding. The tree then creates a new substrate from which new trees grow and animals use as shelter.

When we arrived at the lake we learned that Sawgrass is a drainage lake where water comes in and goes out through streams. Many lakes and ponds are formed by sinkholes when substrate dissolves and are often found in clusters.

I was surprised to learn that the cloudier a body of water looks, the more nutrient rich the water is. Sawgrass is a mesotrophic lake, which means that it has a fair amount of nutrients, plant life, and has a high amount of animal diversity. From the dock we were able to easily view moore hens, alligator gars, softshell turtles, and even an alligator.

On the way out a few of us were lucky enough to observe a large hawk among the branches of a tree, probably searching the swampy ground for prey.

Something that stood out during our trip was the amount of trash along the sides of the boardwalk, which highlights one of the threats to this environment: Humans; other threats include pollution, invasive species, and climate change.