The Everglades Handbook : Understanding the Ecosystem

The second edition of a bestseller, The Everglades Handbook: Understanding the Ecosystem continues to provide a wealth of information on the entire ecosystem of the Everglades. Offering the essentials of what the ecosystem is and how it works, the Handbook benefits those addressing issues such as Everglades restoration, water management, wildlife management, and water quality problems in urban and agricultural planning.

With an emphasis on natural history, the text is unified around themes of biogeography and ecosystem functions of the plant and animal communities. It presents current and historical geology, discussions of human impacts, ecosystem degradation, and planned restoration, and covers the socioeconomic aspects of the Everglades ecosystem.

What’s new in the Second Edition:

• Additional chapter on Big Cypress Swamp
• New section on Lake Okeechobee and its headwaters
• A new synthesis chapter which diagrams ecological succession and food webs

Thomas E Lodge, Ph.D., is a self-employed ecologist. He has led numerous environmental projects directly relating to the Everglades, including the development of methodology for evaluating the ecological functions and values of historic Everglades wetlands for the purpose of providing "no net loss" of wetlands. Dr. Lodge has served on the Board of Directors of the Tropical Audubon Society and was an appointed member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s "Multi-Species Ecosystem Restoration Team," which assisted in Everglades restoration strategies dealing with listed species. He has also occupied an invited faculty position to teach South Florida Ecology at Florida International University, where the all editions of The Everglades Handbook: Understanding the Ecosystem have been used as course texts.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Lodge has a B.A. with a major and departmental honors in zoology from Ohio Wesleyan University (1966) and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami in Florida (1974). In graduate school, he became fascinated with the Everglades, both academically and personally. In addition to publishing magazine articles on the Everglades, he wrote and directed an educational film ("The Everglades Region, An Ecological Study", John Wiley and Sons, 1973), and published on the fishes of the region. After receiving his Ph.D., he became an environmental consultant, specializing in wetlands and aquatic ecosystems. Dr. Lodge still works as a consultant, with two recent examples being a reassessment of Everglades restoration options in a team effort with The Everglades Foundation and protection of Grassy Waters Preserve, part of the historic Loxahatchee Slough. His professional interest in the Everglades is mirrored in his personal interests. For more than 40 years he has been a regular observer and photographer of Everglades wildlife, his ultimate relaxation.