Florida

Those of you that have been reading SKTS for a while know that the content is largely driven by the classes that I'm teaching at the time. Thus far, there's been a lot of fish (that'll continue), a lot of evolutionary biology (ditto), with liberal doses of conservation biology, vertebrate zoology and assorted other items. This fall, I'll be offering my class in Subtropical Ecology, where my intrepid band of explorers and I investigate habitats around the state of Florida, ranging from longleaf pine forests and pitcher plant bogs in the north to mangrove forests and coral reefs in the Florida Keys. So, that content will be coming. Here's an early offering.

Florida is characterized by a series of ridges, like the Trail Ridge, that run from north to south down the peninsula. These ridges bear abundant marine fossils in their sandy deposits. A new study out of Gainesville indicates that the marine nature of these elevated ridges results from isostatic rise of the land, rather than elevated sea levels. The peninsula, and its ridges, have risen as the result of the lowered density of crust deposits as acidic waters dissolve some of the limestone making them up. As the crust lightens, it's lifted by the mantle beneath. That's till going on, at a rate of about .05 mm per year. Unfortunately, that's not enough of an increase to keep up with rising sea levels, estimated at about 3 mm per year. Enjoy your waterfront property while you can.