Soil Carbon and Phosphorus Responses to Hydrologic Management Scenarios in Everglades Restoration.

The Synthesis of Everglades Research and Ecosystem Services (SERES) project is a multi-disciplinary effort to evaluate a range of novel Everglades restoration options, building upon the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan(CERP) but using alternative storage and decompartmentalization options. In an effort to provide land managers and agency decision makers sound scientific guidance for continuation of Everglades restoration activities, a series of five restoration scenarios were assessed using the Everglades Landscape Model (ELM). The ELM explicitly integrates fully dynamic flux equations that integrate hydrology, nutrients, plants, and soils. The model incorporates both overland and subsurface groundwater flows. the modeled restoration scenarios included the existing baseline condition of the ecosystem (ECB), full implementation of CERP, and three intermediate scenarios termed Options C,D, and E in reference to three levels of hydrologic restoration incrementally approaching full CERP. Metrics of evaluation under ELM included changes to organic soil accretion rate and soil total phosphorus (TP) accretion rates in 500m x 500m grid cells across 1, 033,450 hectares of wetland landscape. While the ECB scenario had the highest level of organic soil accretion over the 36 year period of simulation (7,460,000 Mg C compared to CERP 6,770,000 Mg C), the negative impact of P accumulation across the Everglades (an additional 17,725 hectares of P impacted landscape) was deemed an unacceptable loss of habitat and thus did not offset the gain in soil accretion or C sequestration. Additionally, while Options C,D,E allowed for partial implementation of CERP, they were inferior with respect to the measures of assessment utilized in this investigation of soil responses to hydrologic restoration.