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we're heading south into the swamps of South Florida
cathedrals of mangrove forests and clean water
That's because the thing that made South Florida's Everglades so inhospitable before it was drained also made it stunningly beautiful and livable.(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID STEPHEN WESTLAKE'S "SELCETTA")BARBER: Only half the Everglades remain
and that could be a problem for drinking water supplies for about 9 million people as sea levels rise
Florida is now trying to save what's left of the swamp with one of the largest ecosystem restoration projects in the nation's history
That work could have given Florida a head start fighting climate change
It's way behind schedule and overbudget by about $15 billion.(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID STEPHEN WESTLAKE'S "SELCETTA")BARBER: In the new podcast Bright Lit Place from WLRN and NPR
environment reporter Jenny Staletovich explains why
We hear an excerpt as she tags along with wetlands ecologist Evelyn Gaiser to the most remote part of the swamp.(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID STEPHEN WESTLAKE'S "SELCETTA")JENNY STALETOVICH
BYLINE: My trip with Gaiser started early in the morning at Everglades National Park
pushing off from a boat ramp near the southernmost tip of mainland Florida
It's hard to tell where the water ends and the sky begins.This is - look at the clouds reflecting...EVELYN GAISER: I mean
it's just so ridiculously shallow here - like
5 feet at the deepest.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: You can see pictures and maps showing what I'm talking about at our website
We head down Shark River and make our way to that monitoring station where we started the episode
have been monitoring Shark River for more than 20 years.RAFAEL TRAVIESO: It depends on the wind.STALETOVICH: The station sits on a platform that's not much bigger than a shower stall
so docking can be tricky.TRAVIESO: Right now
It must be max low tide.STALETOVICH: The platform connects to single boards elevated above the mangrove prop roots
Travieso found two pythons wrapped around it.GAISER: One of which came home in the cooler.TRAVIESO: Well
I gave it to the person doing python research in the park.STALETOVICH: I've been out here before
and I'm always amazed at what the equipment is capable of doing.TRAVIESO: That is called the auto sampler
So it is a machine that collects - we have - it has a peristaltic pump inside that collects water every 18 hours
and the computer tells the machine when to collect the water.STALETOVICH: It's one of the very remotest places in the state
mangroves line the coast in a protective embrace.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GAISER: It's just exactly how you would expect a plant to look that can deal with storms and winds and floodwaters and...STALETOVICH: It's a fence.GAISER: Yeah
That's right.STALETOVICH: Mangroves are hugely important out here
This fringe of force wrapping around the coast is Florida's version of the Amazon
the mangrove forests stabilize muddy banks to keep parts of South Florida from washing away.GAISER: Mangroves are able to build soil rapidly
which combats the rising seas and can buffer these coastal zones from storms
so they have these massive prop roots that stabilize them and the soils underneath them and the whole forest behind them.STALETOVICH: Building land is like their superpower.GAISER: If the salt is intruding slowly
like it has over the last several millennia
and they can deal with it and they can creep inland
They can have their little propagule set root in these areas and grow very happily.STALETOVICH: But now they're having trouble keeping up
about three feet of soggy peat soil has shriveled up like a sponge and collapsed because of unnatural drought conditions
deeper ponds open up in place of the sawgrass marshes.GAISER: When the water is so deep in these collapsed areas
the mangroves cannot do that.STALETOVICH: Sea rise is also taking advantage of that lost elevation
and that can make peat collapse worse.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GAISER: We were trying to set a level of phosphorus that would protect the interior of the Everglades ecosystem
Everybody knew that that was going to be very costly.STALETOVICH: That's after the break.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: Explain to me how we're going to - so I'm prepared to know
am I going to - how much am I going to sink and how - 'cause I'm just taking my phone and my recorder...LUKE LAMB: Oh.STALETOVICH: And...LAMB: No
we're...STALETOVICH: This is from a field trip I took a few years ago when I was trying to better understand peat collapse in the same marshes Gaiser is studying.LAMB: There might be a couple spots where it might get kind of up here.STALETOVICH: OK.LAMB: But I'll go
you'll be able to know.STALETOVICH: OK.So I asked Florida International University student Luke Lamb if I could tag along during his fieldwork
To get to the sawgrass prairie where the peat is
we need to push our way through a thick stand of trees and brush.LAMB: Ow
That you don't want to touch.STALETOVICH: We get past the trees and wade into the sawgrass and find planks hidden underwater that make it easier to walk across the muddy bottom
the muck can trap your feet.LAMB: So then this ends
and then it'll be kind of a step down.STALETOVICH: (Laughter) All right
Now what?LAMB: And then take kind of a larger step
And there's - you got it?STALETOVICH: I don't think I'm on a...LAMB: You're on it?STALETOVICH: I don't think I'm on it.LAMB: OK
So...STALETOVICH: How do you see where...LAMB: I mean
It'll be there.STALETOVICH: Lamb is working on his doctorate in a different lab in Gaiser's department
He works with a team tracking peat collapse
there are places that can only be reached by helicopter
There's plenty of spots scientists have never visited
three-foot sample plots of sawgrass are enclosed in plastic sheeting so Lamb can track growth rates and take water samples
Check out our website brightlitplace.org for photographs and maps of the sawgrass marshes.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: To take soil borings
we need to leave the relative safety of the boardwalk
we sink up to our thighs in muck and water
The sharp sawgrass quickly starts to take my radio gear apart.Uh-oh
I - crap.LAMB: What?STALETOVICH: I lost my - the foamy thing on top of my...LAMB: Oh.STALETOVICH: Do you see it
Right here.STALETOVICH: Thank you.LAMB: It's a little wet
I'll squeeze that out.Lamb starts pointing out the obvious peat collapse.LAMB: And you can see
these aren't - sometimes I kind of call this place kind of a wasteland at times
There's not really any way to avoid this spot
Have to go...STALETOVICH: This is where I get stuck after I step in a hole.Oh.The suction from the mud traps me.LAMB: Yeah
my God.So one of Lamb's colleagues has to pull me out.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.STALETOVICH: Thank you
My God (laughter).UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.LAMB: That's pretty much the way.STALETOVICH: We finally get to the spot Lamb is looking for
shrubby mangrove island rising out of the sawgrass
The marsh mosquitoes here are joined by horseflies.(SOUNDBITE OF FLIES BUZZING)STALETOVICH: Lamb plunges a metal soil bore down into the peat.LAMB: Two-oh-three.STALETOVICH: It's called the Russian after the Russian scientist who designed it in the '60s.LAMB: One-ninety-one.STALETOVICH: There's also a Swedish probe that I'm guessing is called the Swede
built up by dying plants over thousands of years
they store a quarter of the planet's carbon.LAMB: Like
210.STALETOVICH: Lamb is reading off depth measurements from the Russian.LAMB: And 96.STALETOVICH: He could not be happier here.LAMB: Six point five nine.STALETOVICH: I should mention that he can also do a 30-mile trail hike in a day.LAMB: I'd do one more.STALETOVICH: When he first came down to interview for the program
he instantly fell in love with the mangrove forests
the cypress domes farther up the coast and places like this - head high in sawgrass
Once he had to wade out of the swamp barefoot after the mud sucked off both his shoes
that's on...STALETOVICH: Did your feet get cut up?LAMB: Oh
yeah.STALETOVICH: Oh.LAMB: I have a picture
It looks like - just like...UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah
stomped all over my foot with their claws out.STALETOVICH: Takes about an hour to collect his peat samples and record their depths
it felt like 10 - not to Lamb.LAMB: I like to say that I was born to work in wetlands because I don't - my skin
Poison is one I'm very allergic to.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: It's the peat under the sawgrass that's a big part of what restoration is trying to save
the Everglades' sawgrass prairies turn into open water and vanish
It's our version of the subsidence wiping out the Louisiana coast
shallow Shark River Slough is supposed to revive with all the water we're trying to send south
just not nearly enough.GAISER: We need way more bridging
We need way more areas of the conservation areas ripped apart
There's a whole lot more of that has to get done in order to get water where it's supposed to be
And in the meantime...STALETOVICH: More on that after the break.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GAISER: If you've given all the information to all the right people to act on them and to see declines happening and - in places where we know exactly how to reverse it
We've all agreed that we need to act on those reversals
and we haven't.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: Part of the problem goes back to getting water clean
I keep bringing this up because it's a fundamental point
Fixing the last fifth of the wild Everglades will not work without clean water
That's what the treatment marshes we visited in Episode 3 are supposed to be doing
Restoration was supposed to send just over a million-acre feet of new water south every year instead of flushing it down rivers and canals and into the ocean
there's not enough treatment marshes to be able to clean and move that much
They're not meeting pollution limits for water off sugar farms now
let alone cleaning the polluted water in Lake Okeechobee
only a tiny amount of that treated water makes it into the Everglades
We talked a lot about a reservoir being built that's supposed to provide some of that
"new water," but even that won't solve the problem.GAISER: You've got really polluted water
And reservoirs do not take nutrient out of water
Reservoirs are not home for that kind of process
And so we need much more acreage to clean the water that comes out of that reservoir than what was authorized.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)STALETOVICH: Research by Gaiser and her colleagues at FIU shows the state needs to add at least another 30,000 acres of pollution-cleaning marshes on top of the 50,000 acres we now have
what we really need to do is look at the science
Because while politicians were wringing their hands over whether to spend money on a pump or a culvert
scientists were building their case for why the Everglades and its mangroves and peat marshes matter not just to Florida
but to the world.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)BARBER: That was an excerpt from WLRN's Bright Lit Place podcast
It was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Catch you Monday for more regularly scheduled SHORT WAVE.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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