Quantitative Sampling of Freshwater Fish Species within the Big Cypress National Preserve: A Long-Term Research Program to Evaluate the Ecological Effects of CERP

Project Investigators: William Loftus, Jerome J. Lorenz Project Personnel: Greg Ellis, Marcus Zokan Project Start Date: 2003 End Date: 2006 Work Plans Project Summaries Data Metadata Publications

Summary

This program will 1) document the distribution, composition, and habitat use by native and introduced fishes so as to evaluate the effects of Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan on Big Cypress National Preserve aquatic habitats, 2) gather specimens for life-history studies, and 3) provide ecological data for use in simulation models that will be used to plan and evaluate restoration actions.

For more information, please see the Influence of Hydrology on Life-History Parameters of Common Freshwater Fishes from Southern Florida Project Webpage. Please note: the previous title for this project was 'Aquatic-Animal Community Dynamics in Seasonally Variable Wetlands of the Big Cypress Swamp.'

A major ecosystem of the South Florida area, the Big Cypress National Preserve, is poorly understood biologically. To detect changes in natural and artificial habitats resulting from Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan programs, baseline data on constituent aquatic communities and their ecology are needed before and after the restoration actions. Fishes and aquatic invertebrates can serve as indicators of the health of these wetlands. They are important because of their role in the food web, as prey for many of the predatory species, especially alligators and wading birds. The data collected here will examine the relationships of the animals to the hydrological regimes. This project has several objectives, the foremost of which is to begin a program of aquatic study in Big Cypress National Preserve. Work is performed in CESU-partnership with National Audubon Society and clients from the National Park Service to design and implement a spatially and temporally explicit, quantitative sampling program for aquatic animals in Big Cypress National Preserve.

This project is part of the National Park Service's Inventory and Monitoring Program.

Work Plans

• 2004

Project Summaries

• 2003
• 2004

Data

• Big Cypress National Preserve Fish Inventory & Monitoring Data (from the data exchange pages)

Metadata

• Big Cypress National Preserve Fish Inventory and Monitoring Data (data set metadata)

Publications

Abstracts

• Distribution, Abundance, and Diversity of Freshwater Fishes in Big Cypress National Preserve (from the GEER Conference, June 2006)
• Distribution, Abundance, and Seasonal Variation of Fishes and Macroinvertebrates in Forested Wetlands of Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida (from the GEER Conference, June 2006)

Fact Sheets

• Inventory of Freshwater Fish Species within Big Cypress National Preserve: The Basis for a Long-Term Sampling Program (FS-2004-3131, available from the U.S. Geological Survey website)

Reports

• Inventory of Freshwater Fishes of the Big Cypress National Preserve