Environmental Trivia | Clementi Environmental Consulting

Does Florida Have Four Seasons?

Rosanne — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 19:03:52 +0000

We certainly do have four seasons not just one long summer and a short spring! The visual cues of the seasons will depend upon where you are in the state. If you are on the gulf coast most of the trees and shrubs you will see are evergreen e.g. live oak, laurel oak, palm trees, mangroves etc. These plants/trees can tolerate the effects of sea spray. Deciduous trees (lose leaves in the fall/winter) are not common on the coast line but are found more inland and in north Florida. We have planted deciduous trees in urban areas near the coast such as the sycamore tree. We can see the color change in the fall from this type of tree. Just a short ride up I-75 and in the fall, which comes later in Florida than our northern states, you will see a lot of color change from cypress, red maple and sweetgum trees. Likewise in the spring you will see these trees begin to produce new leaves heralding the seasonal change. In addition there are a number of trees, grasses and shrubs that flower in the spring. The seasonal change is caused by two physical phenomena: length of the day and the change in temperature which are not mutually exclusive. However, different species display physical changes based on responses to one of these changes or both. Some trees begin to lose leaves based on the length of the day. Others require a frost before they begin to change. Some migratory birds begin to put on fat for migration due to the change in the length of the day. Notice how the change in daylight or temperature effects you. We too have physical and emotional changes with the seasons.

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Did You Know The Bays Change Color?

Rosanne — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 18:22:59 +0000

Did you know most aerials are flown and taken in the winter months after a cold front during a cloudless day? The color of the water in an estuary will changewith the season and depending upon how much rain has fallen in the drainage basin. I was at the boat basin on Davis Islands in Tampa Florida and a mother did notwant her toddler to get the water in his face. I heard her say the water was dirty. The color of the water was in fact reddish brown. The boat basin is not far from the location of the confluence of the water from the Hillsborough River. The water in most of the central Florida streams is brown due to tannin from leaf decomposition in the water. Here is an image (on the left) of this boat basin in which the water is dark from runoff of the Hillsborough River and in fact other rivers and creeks that flow into Hillsborough and Tampa Bays. Here on the right is an aerial of the basin in the winter in which the flow from the rivers and creeks is greatly reduced. Notice the color of the water is greenish blue. When I was younger the color of Hillsborough Bay was always dark due to poor waste water treatment. Today we have a state of the art waste water treatment plant for Tampa and the bay is greenish blue again! In the future when you travel over the bridges of estuaries, notice the color and note the time of year and the amount of recent rainfall. Enjoy this color change as it is normal and natural.

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Let’s Look at Rainfall Data for the Last 94 Years

admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:18:04 +0000

Florida’s Southwest Water Management District has the rainfall data for 16 counties in this area for the previous 94 years. I graphed three counties, two adjacent and the northern county in the district: Hillsborough, Polk and Levy. While there has been major fluctuation in all the counties, the oscillation has been between 40 inches and 80 inches in all three counties.

I recently read a paper by Naziha Azli and Norhafizah Ramli (University of Malaysia) regarding trends from climate data that oscillates. There are those who want to perform a regression analysis of the data to plot a straight line. In every case the straight line will be ascending which people translate to mean that the average temperature/rainfall, etc. is steadily rising. However, Azli and Ramli found that if you plot a random series of numbers that oscillate up and down as rainfall and temperature do, the regression analyses will always yield an ascending line. It is not appropriate to do this analysis on this type of data. When reviewing the rainfall data for this region, there is clear oscillation but no apparent change in the range. We cannot say from this data that rainfall is dropping or dramatically rising. It also depends on how you pull the data. If you look at the first 30 years of data for Hillsborough County, the average rainfall is 52 inches, which is considered the average for the area. If you pull 32 years different but consecutive years, the average is 62 inches. So what cycle are we in at any given time? Only God knows.

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