Florida is not just full of beautiful beaches, restaurants, and nightclubs. We are home to three amazing national parks including Biscayne Bay National Park. Less than an hour south of Miami and over 172,000 acres long, this park is vital in protecting Biscayne Bay and the offshore reefs. Here are 8 facts about the park:
Ninety-five percent of the park is water, and the shore of the bay is the location of an extensive mangrove forest. 1 Biscayne National Park protects four distinct ecosystems: the shoreline mangrove swamp, the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay, the coral limestone keys and the offshore Florida Reef. 2 Biscayne National Park comprises 172,971 acres (69,999 ha) in Miami-Dade County in southeast Florida. Extending from just south of Biscayne southward to just north of Key Largo, the park includes Soldier Key, the Ragged Keys, Sands Key, Elliott Key, Totten Key and Old Rhodes Key, as well as smaller islands that form the northernmost extension of the Florida Keys. 3 The Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands Project (BBCW) is a CERP component specifically intended to redistribute water flow so that fresh water is introduced gradually through creeks and marshes rather than short, heavy discharges through drainage canals. 4 The earliest proposals for the protection of Biscayne Bay were included in proposals by Everglades National Park advocate Ernest F. Coe, whose proposed Everglades park boundaries included Biscayne Bay. 5 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Public Law 90-606 to create Biscayne National Monument on October 18, 1968. The park was later preserved and established on June 28, 1980. 6 Mangroves shed leaves at about 2 to 4 short tons per acre (4.5 to 9.0 t/ha) per year. Because the carbon in the leaves is sequestered by incorporation into animals, the mangrove swamp is estimated to have two to three times the ability to sequester carbon of terrestrial forests. 7 The mangrove forest on Biscayne Bay is the longest on Florida's east coast. 8 Sources: 1 – 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscayne_National_Park Comments are closed.
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