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Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades
Consider just two of the countless facts about the damage we have done to the Everglades: Half of its original 14,000-square-mile expanse is gone, and saving what is left will cost at least $8.4 billion. Alluding to destruction on a scale we can barely grasp, figures like these can at once stir and immobilize us. In Liquid Land , Ted Levin guides us past the dire headlines and into the magnificent swamp itself, where we come face-to-face with the plants, animals, and landscapes that remain and that will survive only if we protect them.
Levin has traveled extensively through the Everglades, often in the company of such dedicated individuals as Archie Jones, the conchologist who for fifty years has been studying and rescuing tree snails, or Frank Mazzotti, with whom Levin spent two weeks in the field monitoring American crocodiles. Through Levin's adventures we come to know intimately a place where water was meant to flow as a broad, shallow "sheet" and where minuscule changes in elevation yield a dramatic change in the diversity of life, from manatees and mangroves on the coast to panthers and orchids in the interior.
Throughout, Levin profiles the various parties who have tried to master, protect, or coexist with the Everglades―from the agribusiness concerns known collectively as Big Sugar to Friends of the Everglades to a small community west of Miami, nameless but for the designation "8.5 Square Mile Area." As we float, sometimes slog, alongside Levin through hammocks, keys, and sloughs, we see firsthand how drainage and development have led to water pollution and salinity fluctuations, a disruption of the swamp's wet/dry seasonal cycle, an explosion in the mosquito population, and a weakened response of the ecosystem to drought, fire, hurricanes, and invasive species.
Liquid Land captures the Everglades' essential beauty and mystery as it explores ongoing restoration efforts. Our success or failure will have an impact on environmental policy around the world, Levin believes. As the preservationist rallying cry goes, "The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we get to keep the planet."
Levin has traveled extensively through the Everglades, often in the company of such dedicated individuals as Archie Jones, the conchologist who for fifty years has been studying and rescuing tree snails, or Frank Mazzotti, with whom Levin spent two weeks in the field monitoring American crocodiles. Through Levin's adventures we come to know intimately a place where water was meant to flow as a broad, shallow "sheet" and where minuscule changes in elevation yield a dramatic change in the diversity of life, from manatees and mangroves on the coast to panthers and orchids in the interior.
Throughout, Levin profiles the various parties who have tried to master, protect, or coexist with the Everglades―from the agribusiness concerns known collectively as Big Sugar to Friends of the Everglades to a small community west of Miami, nameless but for the designation "8.5 Square Mile Area." As we float, sometimes slog, alongside Levin through hammocks, keys, and sloughs, we see firsthand how drainage and development have led to water pollution and salinity fluctuations, a disruption of the swamp's wet/dry seasonal cycle, an explosion in the mosquito population, and a weakened response of the ecosystem to drought, fire, hurricanes, and invasive species.
Liquid Land captures the Everglades' essential beauty and mystery as it explores ongoing restoration efforts. Our success or failure will have an impact on environmental policy around the world, Levin believes. As the preservationist rallying cry goes, "The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we get to keep the planet."
312 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 5, 2013
_Liquid Land_ by Ted Levin was a thoroughly engaging portrait of the Florida Everglades. A good mixture of natural and human history, politics, and travelogue the book was divided into three parts and was accompanied by photographs and several maps.
The first section laid out what the environment of this unique ecosystem is like. We learn that the Everglades is only the most distinctive feature of south Florida, part of a landscape of wetlands that once covered 14,000 square miles (6,000 miles of which was Everglades proper) and still includes rivers, lakes, pine flatwoods, inland and coastal swamps, tree islands (which support miniature forests of tropical hardwoods), mangrove jungles, and Florida Bay, all a region ruled by tropical seasons, wet and dry, with intermittent hammering by "big weather" (mainly hurricanes) and wildfires (interestingly fires play a major and needed role in the region`s ecology though fires that result from the lack of water due to human drainage have been devastating).
The Everglades itself is a region of shallow, slowly flowing water, called sheet flow, a singular feature of the region. It is an "absorbent plain of limestone rife with tropical greenery" (five different formations of limestone, none older than six million years), land that is "on the verge of water, water on the verge of land." It is not a dark and menacing swamp such as found in Hollywood films (though there are cypress swamps in the area) nor is it a river with visible banks, despite the area sometimes being called the "river of grass" after far and away its most visible plant, sawgrass, _Cladium jamaicense_, which is in fact not a grass at all but a sedge, a "lean, sharp vegetative blade", a plant that can grow 10 feet tall and once dominated 30% of the pre-drainage Everglades, over 1200 square miles; also it should be called rivers of grass, as there are two separate drainages. Even these areas, which might appear to the uninitiated as a monotonous, "endless run of fierce-edged sawgrass" has tremendous variety as it is a mosaic of sloughs, marshes, weed-choked lakes, cypress stands, hardwood tree islands, tidal rivers, and marl prairies (greasy, limy areas that are "shoe-sucking, tire-sliding...slippery earth through which the limestone pokes", an area known for gator holes, reptilian excavations crucial for many species during the dry season).
The second section was ten chapters devoted to the natural history of Everglades environments and species and also the people who study them. We learn that the Everglades is home to staggering numbers of mosquitoes (one study noted that two thousand mosquitoes per minute landed on white-shirted human volunteers and the park boasts 45 species), the bewildering variety of tree snails in the Everglades (58 variants exist, all apparently developed from a single beachhead established by individuals that floated over from Cuba 5000 years ago), and that the Everglades once supported the largest concentration of wading birds in North America, possibly the world (as recently as the 1930s a quarter of a million ibis, egret, heron, wood stork, and spoonbill would congregate on small fish and invertebrates trapped in shrinking pools on the marl prairies). Other chapters looked at such topics as the American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther, snail kites, and the mangrove coast.
The third and final section looked at the many problems facing the Everglades. Unlike other national parks and wilderness areas in the United States, the Everglades lies at the bottom of its watershed and has been called by some the "the Park at the End of the Pipe." Easily America's most imperiled national park, novelist Joy Williams wrote that the Everglades is really an illusion, a wetland that exists only because of the efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Much of the 20th century has seen state and federal governments simultaneously trying to destroy and save the Everglades, with the Army Corps of Engineers having the largest role, subdividing the Everglades into an agricultural district (the Everglades Agricultural Area, or EAA, dominated by "Big Sugar" and where every fourth teaspoon of sugar consumed in the U.S. is grown), three water conservation areas, and a national park, creating canals, levees, spillways, and straightening former meandering rivers in an effort to "tame" the landscape to suit the needs of flood control, construction, and agriculture and yet also later on trying to serve the needs of various endangered wildlife species (ironically, conservationists don`t always agree, as a restoration scheme that favors one animal species might be at the expense of broader-scale efforts to restore the entire wetland).
The author discussed the various competing interests in the region for land and water in South Florida, particularly agriculture, showing how the efforts to cultivate crops - mainly sugar - on marginal farmland has had disastrous consequences, often resulting in the park being deprived of water when it was most needed and flooded during the dry season as sugarcane cultivation is completely out of sync with South Florida`s natural cycles. These crops - particularly sugar - are often subsidized by the government (Levin discussed Big Sugar politics and personalities).
In addition to starving the region of water, phosphorus-rich runoff water from the EAA has favored the explosive growth of cattails at the expense of plants of a normally low-phosphorus environment (like sawgrass); more than 50,000 acres of cattails have spread at the expense of fish and wading birds.
There is much debate over which Everglades to restore, as to a large extent pre-drainage Everglades is only incompletely understood and different people have used the Everglades as it appeared in different decades as the benchmark with which success is measured. Generally a restored Everglades will have higher water quality, a reestablished overland connection between the various preserved portions of the Everglades under state and federal control, a restoration of peripheral, bordering wetlands, a return of more freshwater to Florida Bay, an improved water storage capacity, and a redirection of trillions of gallons of water lost to the sea without flooding farmland or cities.
The first section laid out what the environment of this unique ecosystem is like. We learn that the Everglades is only the most distinctive feature of south Florida, part of a landscape of wetlands that once covered 14,000 square miles (6,000 miles of which was Everglades proper) and still includes rivers, lakes, pine flatwoods, inland and coastal swamps, tree islands (which support miniature forests of tropical hardwoods), mangrove jungles, and Florida Bay, all a region ruled by tropical seasons, wet and dry, with intermittent hammering by "big weather" (mainly hurricanes) and wildfires (interestingly fires play a major and needed role in the region`s ecology though fires that result from the lack of water due to human drainage have been devastating).
The Everglades itself is a region of shallow, slowly flowing water, called sheet flow, a singular feature of the region. It is an "absorbent plain of limestone rife with tropical greenery" (five different formations of limestone, none older than six million years), land that is "on the verge of water, water on the verge of land." It is not a dark and menacing swamp such as found in Hollywood films (though there are cypress swamps in the area) nor is it a river with visible banks, despite the area sometimes being called the "river of grass" after far and away its most visible plant, sawgrass, _Cladium jamaicense_, which is in fact not a grass at all but a sedge, a "lean, sharp vegetative blade", a plant that can grow 10 feet tall and once dominated 30% of the pre-drainage Everglades, over 1200 square miles; also it should be called rivers of grass, as there are two separate drainages. Even these areas, which might appear to the uninitiated as a monotonous, "endless run of fierce-edged sawgrass" has tremendous variety as it is a mosaic of sloughs, marshes, weed-choked lakes, cypress stands, hardwood tree islands, tidal rivers, and marl prairies (greasy, limy areas that are "shoe-sucking, tire-sliding...slippery earth through which the limestone pokes", an area known for gator holes, reptilian excavations crucial for many species during the dry season).
The second section was ten chapters devoted to the natural history of Everglades environments and species and also the people who study them. We learn that the Everglades is home to staggering numbers of mosquitoes (one study noted that two thousand mosquitoes per minute landed on white-shirted human volunteers and the park boasts 45 species), the bewildering variety of tree snails in the Everglades (58 variants exist, all apparently developed from a single beachhead established by individuals that floated over from Cuba 5000 years ago), and that the Everglades once supported the largest concentration of wading birds in North America, possibly the world (as recently as the 1930s a quarter of a million ibis, egret, heron, wood stork, and spoonbill would congregate on small fish and invertebrates trapped in shrinking pools on the marl prairies). Other chapters looked at such topics as the American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther, snail kites, and the mangrove coast.
The third and final section looked at the many problems facing the Everglades. Unlike other national parks and wilderness areas in the United States, the Everglades lies at the bottom of its watershed and has been called by some the "the Park at the End of the Pipe." Easily America's most imperiled national park, novelist Joy Williams wrote that the Everglades is really an illusion, a wetland that exists only because of the efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Much of the 20th century has seen state and federal governments simultaneously trying to destroy and save the Everglades, with the Army Corps of Engineers having the largest role, subdividing the Everglades into an agricultural district (the Everglades Agricultural Area, or EAA, dominated by "Big Sugar" and where every fourth teaspoon of sugar consumed in the U.S. is grown), three water conservation areas, and a national park, creating canals, levees, spillways, and straightening former meandering rivers in an effort to "tame" the landscape to suit the needs of flood control, construction, and agriculture and yet also later on trying to serve the needs of various endangered wildlife species (ironically, conservationists don`t always agree, as a restoration scheme that favors one animal species might be at the expense of broader-scale efforts to restore the entire wetland).
The author discussed the various competing interests in the region for land and water in South Florida, particularly agriculture, showing how the efforts to cultivate crops - mainly sugar - on marginal farmland has had disastrous consequences, often resulting in the park being deprived of water when it was most needed and flooded during the dry season as sugarcane cultivation is completely out of sync with South Florida`s natural cycles. These crops - particularly sugar - are often subsidized by the government (Levin discussed Big Sugar politics and personalities).
In addition to starving the region of water, phosphorus-rich runoff water from the EAA has favored the explosive growth of cattails at the expense of plants of a normally low-phosphorus environment (like sawgrass); more than 50,000 acres of cattails have spread at the expense of fish and wading birds.
There is much debate over which Everglades to restore, as to a large extent pre-drainage Everglades is only incompletely understood and different people have used the Everglades as it appeared in different decades as the benchmark with which success is measured. Generally a restored Everglades will have higher water quality, a reestablished overland connection between the various preserved portions of the Everglades under state and federal control, a restoration of peripheral, bordering wetlands, a return of more freshwater to Florida Bay, an improved water storage capacity, and a redirection of trillions of gallons of water lost to the sea without flooding farmland or cities.
June 23, 2022
Great introduction to the ecology, natural history, and human-caused disruption of south Florida - more or less the historic extent of the Everglades. Written about 20 years ago, the book remains relevant. Although repetitive in places, this means you can easily skip around to whatever topic peaks your curiosity, e.g. mangroves, alligators, shorebirds…
January 20, 2023
Parts of this book function as a historical look at well-known creatures and plants from the everglades. Other portions function almost as a travel journal. Then, the book changes again and becomes a political response tracker for the 90s. It is a very comprehensive book, but the regular changing of topics makes it difficult to read for long periods of time.
March 13, 2011
Ted Levin is a gifted writer, especially considering that he's writing a somewhat scientific book which could be dull and laborious but is instead often poetic. Levin mostly tells stories of his times with those who do various types of research or make a living from the Everglades. He recreates his time with a frog-gigger, a bird researcher, a snail researcher, someone trying to protect panthers, etc. He delves into some of the political issues surrounding the water of the Everglades and paints a pretty good big picture.
Here are a few excerpts which I liked:
p 135 After dinner we paddle beneath a three-quarter moon, watch silver light dash across the tops of prop roots, and listen to the huff and puff of porpoises. The wind is dead; the temperature is a delightful seventy degrees. From somewhere an owl's voice rides the night currents.
p 139 The hardest thing you put up with her are mosquitoes, and they never color my memories.
p 148 A tulip snail clutches a crown conch in its foot and slowly drills a hole in its shell, predator on predator. When the hole is finished the tulip will begin to dissolve the conch's insides and siphon the juices. Then one more shell will roll toward the beach and line up to become sand.
p 161 When the spoonbill sees us, it flushes, a pink bird in an otherwise blue sky, a sight that makes me happy to be alive.
Here are a few excerpts which I liked:
p 135 After dinner we paddle beneath a three-quarter moon, watch silver light dash across the tops of prop roots, and listen to the huff and puff of porpoises. The wind is dead; the temperature is a delightful seventy degrees. From somewhere an owl's voice rides the night currents.
p 139 The hardest thing you put up with her are mosquitoes, and they never color my memories.
p 148 A tulip snail clutches a crown conch in its foot and slowly drills a hole in its shell, predator on predator. When the hole is finished the tulip will begin to dissolve the conch's insides and siphon the juices. Then one more shell will roll toward the beach and line up to become sand.
p 161 When the spoonbill sees us, it flushes, a pink bird in an otherwise blue sky, a sight that makes me happy to be alive.
May 22, 2016
Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Everglades by Ted Levin (University of Georgia Press 2003) (508.75939). This is an excellent series of natural history essays on the Everglades. Its seasons, the reasons for its decline (the Army Corps of Engineers, human encroachment, and Big Sugar), and individual profiles on some of its prominent denizens (alligators, American crocodiles, Florida panthers, and mosquitoes) are the most engaging and enlightening features of this little book. My rating: 7/10, finished 5/14/16.
January 31, 2009
There were some biases from what I know from my job and it was interesting to read other perspectives. The only things I didn't like were that some of the interviews done on the chapters about aniamls/ecosystems didn't really note the dates at the beginning, so it would seem like these were happening after 2000, but many happened in the early 90's. I wish that had been addressed.
July 4, 2011
A complete look at the history, flora and fauna and restoration of the Everglades. Well written. Sometimes depressing. Must-read for anyone interested in the Everglades. The mosquito chapter is the best.
May 21, 2008
Great natural history combined with enjoyable narrative.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews