Florida and the Everglades National Park
Today’s Image of the Day from the European Space Agency features Florida and the Everglades National Park located between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.
The large body of water in the top of the false color image is Lake Okeechobee. Miami is captured in the lower right of the photograph, and Fort Myers is on the left.
Geometric patterns of agriculture and infrastructure are visible across the land area, while part of the Everglades can be seen in the lower section of the image.
The Everglades have been designated a Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve by the UN.
The wilderness reserve consists of shallow, slow-moving water filled with thick sawgrass. The Everglades are home to alligators, crocodiles, Florida panthers, and manatees. Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States, and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. An average of one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States after Death Valley and Yellowstone. 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
Image Credit: ESA
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
