Fire ecology -- Florida -- Everglades National Park

Self-organized spatial patterning of microtopographic features is a trademark
characteristic of the Everglades landscape. Anthropogenic modifications to Everglades’
hydrology have reduced and degraded pattern, where ridges occur at higher elevations
and spread into open water sloughs under dryer conditions. Wildfire is an important
ecological force in the central Everglades and may maintain ridge-slough patterning
through reducing ridge size and complexity, and thus preserve habitat heterogeneity. To
investigate fire as a patterning mechanism in the central Everglades I examined the shape
complexity and area distribution of ridges along a chronosequence of time since fire.
Shape complexity did not change following fire, but small and large ridges became more
prominent and eventually spread as time since fire increased, suggesting fire may
maintain ridge area distribution. Documentation of fires’ effect on ridge size will inform
ecosystem and conceptual models detailing the complex interactions that maintain the
Everglades ridge-slough patterning.