The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), the science agency of the Department of the Interior, has a lead role in the Federal Government's initiative aimed at restoration of the south Florida ecosystem. The south Florida ecosystem extends from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay and encompasses the Everglades - the largest remaining subtropical wilderness in the continental United States. USGS scientists, in cooperation with researchers from other Federal and State agencies, as well as academia, are undertaking a comprehensive program to evaluate the ecosystem's behavior. The objective of the program is to invoke the latest scientific findings in the decision-making process of land and resource managers for planning, evaluating, and executing needed restoration actions. One major component of the program is focused on investigating the hydrologic and hydraulic factors that affect the flow of water through the ecosystem. A vast network of interlaced canals, rimmed with levees and fitted with hydraulic control structures, and highways, built on elevated embankments lined by drainage ditches and underlain by culverts, act in concert with extensive wetlands to confine, control, and direct the flow of water. As water flows south in the canals and wetlands past the city of Miami and into Florida Bay, it is augmented by seasonably variable precipitation, diminished by eastward diversions, and sustains losses through evapotranspiration and ground-water infiltration. Along its path, the flow of water is subject to the resistance effects of variably-dense vegetation and the shear-stress effects of winds, all the while serving as a potential conduit for the transport of nutrients and(or) contaminants. Hydrologic studies of the ecosystem's flow behavior are yielding scientific findings that are helping to quantify hydroperiods and hydropatterns that define wet-season durations critical to sustaining safe habitat for flora and fauna. In addition, the results of these discrete studies are being integrated into numerical models that can and are being used to investigate cause-and-effect relations between hydrologic processes, both at local and regional scales. In this paper, some major hydrologic findings are presented and their potential role in the design and evaluation of restoration plans and actions is discussed.

Abstract from "The 26th Annual Water Resources Planning and Management Conference"

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