This research was funded by the US Geological Survey, Biological Resources Discipline under Cooperative Agreement Number 1445-CA09-95-0112, Sub-agreement #4 'Studies of Wood Decomposition and Nutrient Dynamics in South-west Florida Mangrove Forests' to Florida International University. Funding to the USGS/BRD was derived in part from the Hurricane Andrew Research Program (Interagency Agreement #5280-5-9020), and the Department of Interior's 'Critical Ecosystems Studies Initiative' (Interagency Agreement #5280-7-9220), both from Everglades National Park. Data analyses and manuscript preparation were partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant no. 9910514 (FCE-LTER). Steve Oberbauer provided valuable advice throughout this study as a member of LMR's thesis committee. We would like to thank Kevin Whelan, Stephanie Cleaves and Stephen Davis for their superb field and laboratory help. We also thank Stephen Davis, Robert Dorazio, Peter Schwarzenski, Kimberly Yates and two anonymous referees for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. We thank the USGS-BRD and Everglades National Park for providing hydrological data. This is contribution number 251 from the Southeast Environmental Research Center at FIU.