Everglades National Park , Homestead, FL

Long Pine Key plots.  (Site Photographs) Some of the last remaining pineland-rockland communities occur on Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park in southern Florida. These are pine savanna communities with an monospefic overstory of South Florida Slash Pine and a rich understory community. Fire is integral to the persistence of these systems and in the absence of frequent fires, the pinelands are replaced by tropical hardwood hammocks. Pineland-rockland communities face many challenges to their continued existence including altered disturbance regimes and non-native, invasive species such brazilian pepper.

Dr.Bill Platt (Louisiana State University) began establishing eight 4- hectare research plots in 1993 following Hurricane Andrew (August 1992) and subequently expanded the sampling to sixteen plots.    All trees above 1.5m dbh have been completely mapped in these stands with biennual censuses of growth and annual censuses of mortality.  Beginning in January 2001, I assumed primary responsibility for maintaining these plots in close cooperation with Dr. Platt.  I have intensively sampled eight of these sixteen plots, including cone production, seed rain, and seedling dynamics in addition to growth and mortality censuses.  In 2002 and 2003, I established a series of permanent photopoints from which we have begun to photographically document changes in stand structure.