Tag: Florida

Florida’s New Longleaf Pine Ecosystem Geodatabase

by Teresa Jackson, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
A U.S. Forest Service competitive resource allocation grant helped fund a cooperative project between and the Florida Forest Service and the Florida Natural Areas Inventory. The Longleaf Pine Ecosystem Geodatabase (LPEGDB) project will serve as the central repository for data on the distribution and ecological condition of longleaf pine ecosystems in Florida. The spatial database…  More 

Sunlight to the Seagrasses

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Just off Florida’s 8,000 miles of coastline and tidal areas, in shallow sunlit waters, over 2 million acres of seagrass meadows waft in the ocean currents. Besides providing food and habitat for manatees, sea turtles, shellfish, and other animals, seagrasses protect coasts from erosion and store vast quantities of carbon dioxide. “Seagrasses grow off the…  More 

The Olustee Experimental Forest

by Carol Whitlock  • 
The 3,135-acre Olustee Experimental Forest (Olustee), located in northeast Florida was established in 1931. Part of the Osceola National Forest, the experimental forest served as the primary study site for a number of U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) units for almost 60 years. In the beginning, research on the Olustee focused mostly on…  More 

Young Scientists Find Nature in their Own Backyards

by Sarah Farmer, adapted from materials provided by Josh McDaniel and Annie Hermansen-Báez  • 
“That’s a tufted titmouse,” says one of Sara Charbonnet’s students, looking through his binoculars at one of the bird-feeding stations in Loblolly Woods Nature Park in Gainesville, Florida. In the classroom, the sixth-grader has trouble staying focused, but that all changes when he is outside. “He considers himself a scientist now. Some of the kids…  More 

Moving Harper’s Beauty Off Road

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The first week of March found a team of plant biologists down on their knees in a highway right-of-way in the Florida Panhandle, searching for Harper’s beauty, one of Florida’s rarest native plants. A perennial lily with a solitary yellow flower and iris-like leaves, Harper’s beauty (Harperocallis flava) is listed as federally endangered and found…  More