ABSTRACT
The apparent tranquillity of the Everglades landscape masks the dynamics of processes that affect vegetation. The composition of Everglades plant communities has been changing since the ecosystem began to form some 5000 years ago. Change has accelerated during the past 100 years, in both subtle and dramatic ways, due to natural and anthropogenic factors. By virtue of its geographic location on a peninsula extending from a temperate continent into the subtropics, the Everglades has a flora comprised of tropical, temperate, and endemic taxa. Human activity during this century has increased the rate of species introduction, resulting in the naturalization of many alien plants, some of which have transformed the character of plant associations. Vegetation patterns are also influenced by a set of environmental processes that operate at distinct spatial scales (from meters to hundreds of kilometers) and distinct temporal rates (from days to centuries). Of these processes, disturbances (such as severe fires and drought/flood cycles, which operate at intermediate scales of tens of kilometers and decades) account for much of the variation in spatial distribution of major types of vegetation communities.
