Sawgrass Marsh
South Florida Water Management District
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The most extensive natural community in the management area is
sawgrass marsh. Sawgrass, which reaches heights of 10 feet or
more, thrived in the low-nutrient and fluctuating water conditions
of the historic Everglades. The black peat of the Everglades valued
for agriculture, especially sugar cane, formed over thousands
of years from decaying sawgrass and charcoal from frequent light
ground fires. Today water levels in the marsh are regulated by
water control structures as well as by rainfall and vary from
an average of 2 feet deep at the peak of the wet season in October
to below ground level at the end of the dry season in May. Sawgrass
is important to ground nesting birds such as the American and
least bitterns, which build elevated mound nests out of dead vegetation
and use the thick growth of sawgrass for cover.
Fires every 1 to 5 years are typical and result from lightning in the late spring when the ground surface is dry, although sawgrass will carry a fire over water. When the peat dries out in extreme droughts, devastating muck fires may consume the soil and lower the ground surface converting the sawgrass marsh to a slough.
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