A staff of 5 that features a feminine University of Florida professor as its lead scientist will embark Thursday on a harmful trek throughout the Florida Everglades to assess the impact of people on the world’s largest subtropical wildness. The group will retrace an 1897 canoe journey that was first accomplished by explorer and scientist Hugh de Laussat Willoughby.
Tracie Baker, an affiliate professor of environmental and world well being within the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, has joined the staff of skilled explorers and guides in a mission to pattern and take a look at for a similar water constituents that Willoughby did greater than a century in the past. Willoughby’s charts aided in creating the primary correct maps of the area, and his water sampling offered the baseline water chemistry for the Everglades.
“This expedition is primarily focused on applying modern scientific investigations to one of the planet’s most important watersheds. However, we also hope to inspire future generations of scientists, explorers and all citizens to be better stewards of our shared environment,” mentioned Baker, a member of the UF Water Institute. “My work focuses on multidisciplinary research that seeks to bridge and improve human, animal and environmental health. The Willoughby Expedition will provide critical primary research into that work.”
To gauge humanity’s impact on the Florida Everglades, a UNESCO Wetland Area of Global Importance, the 2022 Willoughby Expedition staff can even search for water pollution that Willoughby couldn’t have foreseen, together with microplastics, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pesticides, prescription drugs and antibiotic-resistant genes, all of that are adversely affecting plant and animal species globally. To assist preserve wildlife, the expedition staff can even doc the abundance and placement of apple snails, that are the only meals supply of the federally endangered snail kite, a chook of prey.
Starting on the mouth of the Harney River within the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 27, and ending in downtown Miami in early November, the coast-to-coast expedition commemorates the seventy fifth anniversary of Everglades National Park. It will traverse the saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico, the brackish water of inland rivers, pristine freshwater sawgrass, canals in suburban Miami, and in the end, by a maze of skyscrapers to Biscayne Bay.
The Florida Everglades is among the world’s finest-recognized and most visited watersheds, serving because the “environmental kidneys” of Florida by filtering and cleansing water from all around the central and southern a part of the state. Its water high quality straight impacts greater than 12 million folks and hundreds of plant and animal species.
Historically, the Florida Everglades stretched from the north close to fashionable-day Orlando to the south at Florida Bay. Willoughby accomplished his research of the Everglades earlier than massive-scale drainage and reclamation applications started within the late nineteenth century. Today, the Everglades has been diminished to roughly one-third its authentic measurement to make method for the trendy cities of South Florida and their tens of millions of residents.
The 2022 Willoughby Expedition will carry consciousness to the key scientific and conservation targets of its greater than 50 companions, together with the University of Florida, National Park Service, Everglades National Park, Florida Power & Light Company, South Florida Water Management District, Marine Industries Association of Palm Beach County, Palm Beach International Boat Show, and Cox Science Center and Aquarium.
To improve academic programming round human impact on the Everglades, the 2022 Willoughby Expedition can also be partnering with college districts and cultural establishments in South Florida. Live feeds from the Everglades shall be shared with colleges and science museums, permitting college students, educators, and museumgoers to work together straight with the expedition staff.
“Public education and the live broadcasts are some of the most exciting and important aspects of the expedition,” mentioned Harvey E. Oyer III, the 2022 Willoughby Expedition’s co-chief, who can also be an writer, archaeologist, fifth-era Floridian, and former U.S. Marine Corps captain. “We want to share our passion for the natural world by giving the public an inside look at our work and igniting their passion to preserve the natural world.”
The Willoughby Expedition staff contains:
- Harvey E. Oyer III, co-chief– Oyer is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain and member of the Explorers Club. He holds a grasp’s diploma in archeology from Cambridge University and is the writer of a bestselling youngsters’s ebook in regards to the Everglades that’s a part of the 4th grade curriculum in Florida.
- Christophe Vandaele, co-chief – A local of Belgium, Vandaele is a graduate of the Belgium Royal Military Academy and the Special Warfare Officer Training School at Marche-les-Dames. He served a number of excursions in Africa and has participated in scientific expeditions within the Andes Mountains, the jungles of Guatemala, and on the North Pole.
- Tracie Baker, DVM, PhD, lead scientist– Baker, an affiliate professor on the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, research environmental contaminants. She is a former NCAA Academic All-American swimmer and has accomplished 4 IRONMAN races and greater than 20 marathons. If the expedition is profitable, Baker would be the first non-indigenous girl to cross the Everglades.
- Carlos “Charlie” Arazoza, navigator – Arazoza is a Cuban American lawyer and CPA in Miami. A vastly skilled Everglades paddler, he has led many journeys by the Everglades, served as chairman of the South Florida National Parks Trust and based the South Florida Bush Paddlers Association.
- Flex Maslan, photographer and documentarian– A local of the Czech Republic, Maslan has virtually 30 years of expertise as a paddling information, main journeys by most of South Florida’s waterways. Maslan can also be knowledgeable photographer whose work has been revealed in nature and watersports books and magazines.
Support staff members embody three different scientists, a chemist, a pilot and a filmmaker.
To study extra in regards to the staff, the course, the science, and the person who impressed all of it, go to willoughbyexpedition.org.