Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay pollen data

This project developed, refined, and utilized a variety of proxies to provide estimates of seasonal, interannual, and decadal salinity history of Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay based on strategically placed sediment cores that aided in the validation and sensitivity testing of hydrologic models and decision making in water management. The datasets contain the pollen information at various depths in the cores. Terrestrial ecosystems of south Florida have undergone numerous human disturbances, ranging from alteration of hydroperiod, fire history, and drainage patterns from the introduction of the canal system to expansion of agricultural activity to the introduction of exotic species, Over historical time, dramatic changes in the ecosystem have been documented and these changes have been attributed to various human activities.

However, the natural variability of the ecosystem was unknown and needed to be determined to assess the true impact of human activity on the modern ecosystem. The project was designed to document historical changes in the terrestrial ecosystem quantitatively, to date any changes and determine whether they resulted form documented human activities, and to establish the baseline level of variability on the south Florida ecosystem to estimate whether the observed changes are greater than would occur naturally.