Wall's Springs and Anderson Park

On our visit to Wall Spring we learned about Karst topography and how it can create different underground systems. Springs are fed from underground aquifers that push out freshwater from within. If you look closely at the water surface you are able to see where that water is coming from because of the rippling of the surface. As the spring pushes out the freshwater it continues out until it meets the waterway that leads out to the ocean. The point where the fresh water meets the salt water is called brackish water. Salinity and temperature increases and the water becomes cloudy because of turbidity.

Spring water tends to be constant in more than one way: temperature, flow, and chemistry. These are kept constant because most of the water making up the spring comes from fast-flowing underground rivers. The pockets that create the openings for this moving water results from underground limestone that dissolves in acidic water.This reaction is what makes underground caves.  If an area that rests on top of these pockets becomes dried out and the water removed, sinkholes can form if the weight of the land caves in. At Anderson Park we got to see up close a sink hole that is connected to the ocean. It assumed that the water in this sinkhole is fresh until it meets its salt water counterpart somewhere underground in the river systems. The water is expected to be clear because there is nothing to disturb or nutrients to make the water cloudy.

It is very important that we do not treat these sinkholes as land fills because they are still part of the underground passage ways of our drinking water.

  the clear water from the spring

  feeding in the brackish water where there are more nutrients and organisms

 the pressure of the spring water releasing into the salt water

  a salt water thriving needle fish

  a young red mangrove and its prop roots (red mangroves have adapted to salt water)

  the sinkhole sitting in front of Lake Tarpon which it has been disconnected from in order to keep the lake fresh