The Glades

Short answer: The Everglades is a region of flooded grasslands in southern Florida. It forms the southern half of the Kissimmee–Okeechobee–Everglades watershed, which begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River.

That river drains into shallow Lake Okeechobee. In the wet season, water spilling south from the lake spreads into a sheet about 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long. It moves about half a mile a day across a limestone shelf toward Florida Bay, and can take months or years to get there. Marjory Stoneman Douglas called it a "river of grass" in her 1947 book. Wikipedia notes the phrase captures only part of the system. Its main feature is sawgrass marsh, broken up by deeper sloughs, tree islands, cypress domes, and mangroves and coastal prairie where it meets the sea. The National Park Service calls the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) a keystone species of the Everglades. In the winter dry season, alligators dig "alligator holes" that hold water when the surrounding marsh dries out, becoming refuges for fish, turtles and wading birds. About half of the original Everglades has been converted to farms and cities. Canals and levees were built from the late 1800s, including 1,400 miles under a 1948 federal flood-control project. Congress approved the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in 2000. Everglades National Park was dedicated by President Truman on December 6, 1947. The footage shows open sawgrass water under a blue sky, then close-ups of marsh plants, an alligator and cypress trunks.

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