Everglades National Park, Florida, United States

Sentinel-2 MSI acquired on 07 December 2019 at 16:05:09 UTC
Sentinel-2 MSI acquired on 15 December 2019 at 16:06:51 UTC
Sentinel-1 CSAR IW acquired on 17 December 2019 from 23:27:37 to 23:28:27 UTC
Sentinel-1 CSAR IW acquired on 22 December 2019 at 23:35:57 UTC
Sentinel-2 MSI acquired on 26 January 2020 at 16:05:09 UTC
Author(s): Sentinel Vision team, VisioTerra, France - svp@visioterra.fr
Keyword(s): Coastal, wetland, biodiversity, mangrove, lagoon, coral reef, marsh, USA.
Fig. 1 - S2 (07 & 15.12.2019, 26.01.2020) - Southern part of the Florida peninsula.
2D view
Fig. 2 - S1 (17 & 22.12.2019) - Florida is the only continental state in the US that has a tropical climate.
2D view
Florida is likely to play an important role in the US election 2020 as the most populated of the usual swingstates. It is by 537 votes out of 6 millions that George W. Bush won all great electors of the state in 2000, who won him the election even as he was 540 000 votes late. The Everglades National Park is one of the striking features of Florida. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976, and listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, while the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.
Fig. 3 - The 270 km long Florida Reef is the 3rd largest coral barrier reef system in the World, it lies a few miles seaward of the Florida Keys.
2D view
The biosphere reserve is described by UNESCO as follows: "The Everglades National Park is a shallow basin tilted to the southwest and underlain by extensive Pleistocene limestones. The reserve also includes Fort Jefferson National Monument, which consists of a group of seven coral reefs called the Dry Tortugas National Park with three major banks forming a pseudo-atoll with a mud-bank type formation."
Fig. 4 - The continental part of the Everglades National Park lies at the southern tip of Florida.
2D view
"The biosphere reserve lies at the interface between temperate and subtropical America between fresh and brackish water, shallow bays, deeper coastal waters and coral reefs, thus creating a complex of habitats supporting a high diversity of flora and fauna. The area of transition from freshwater (glades) to saltwater (mangrove) is a highly productive zone that incubates great numbers of economically valuable crustaceans. Southern Florida vegetation is unique in the United States, but similar communities occur throughout the Caribbean and parts of tropical America. Freshwater and wet prairies characterized by islands of tropical hardwood trees; saltmarshes; mangrove forests; beach and dune complexes; brackish water estuaries; cypress swamps; marine systems; coral reefs."
Fig. 5 - Everglades have been called 'a river of grass flowing imperceptibly from the hinterland into the sea'.
2D view
Its World Heritage sheet adds: "The Everglades is a vast, nearly flat, seabed that was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age. Its limestone substrate is one of the most active areas of modern carbonate sedimentation. It contains the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, the largest continuous stand of sawgrass prairie and the most significant breeding ground for wading birds in North America."
Fig. 6 - The park encompasses both freshwater and saltwater type of wetlands.
2D view
"The Everglades contains vast subtropical wetlands and coastal/marine ecosystems including freshwater marshes, tropical hardwood hammocks, pine rocklands, extensive mangrove forests, saltwater marshes, and seagrass ecosystems important to commercial and recreational fisheries. Complex biological processes range from basic algal associations through progressively higher species and ultimately to primary predators such as the alligator, crocodile, and Florida panther; the food chain is superbly evident and unbroken. The mixture of subtropical and temperate wildlife species is found nowhere else in the United States."
Fig. 7 - The exceptional variety of its water habitats has made it a sanctuary for a large number of birds and reptiles.
2D view
"Everglades National Park is a noteworthy example of viable biological processes. The exceptional variety of its water habitats has made it a sanctuary for a large number of birds and reptiles and it provides refuge for over 20 rare, endangered, and threatened species. These include the Florida panther, snail kite, alligator, crocodile, and manatee. It provides important foraging and breeding habitat for more than 400 species of birds, includes the most significant breeding grounds for wading birds in North America and is a major corridor for migration."
Fig. 8 - Zoom in on the marine part of the Everglades, south of the peninsula and behind the Keys.
3D view
The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Space Agency or the European Union.
Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024, processed by VisioTerra.
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