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Has the Conversion of Natural Wetlands to Agricultural Land Increased the Incidence and Severity of Damaging Freezes in South Florida?

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Has the Conversion of Natural Wetlands to Agricultural Land Increased the Incidence and Severity of Damaging Freezes in South Florida? SEPTEMBER 2004 MARSHALL ET AL. 2243 Has the Conversion of Natural Wetlands to Agricultural Land Increased the Incidence and Severity of Damaging Freezes in South Florida? CURTIS H. MARSHALL* AND ROGER A. PIELKE SR. Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado LOUIS T. S TEYAERT EROS Data Center, U.S. Geological Survey, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland (Manuscript received 24 September 2003, in ®nal form 24 February 2004) ABSTRACT On several occasions, winter freezes have wrought severe destruction on Florida agriculture. A series of devastating freezes around the turn of the twentieth century, and again during the 1980s, were related to anomalies in the large-scale ¯ow of the ocean±atmosphere system. During the twentieth century, substantial areas of wetlands in south Florida were drained and converted to agricultural land for winter fresh vegetable and sugarcane production. During this time, much of the citrus industry also was relocated to those areas to escape the risk of freeze farther to the north. The purpose of this paper is to present a modeling study designed to investigate whether the conversion of the wetlands to agriculture itself could have resulted in or exacerbated the severity of recent freezes in those agricultural areas of south Florida. For three recent freeze events, a pair of simulations was undertaken with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System. One member of each pair employed land surface properties that represent pre-1900s (near natural) land cover, whereas the other member of each pair employed data that represent near-current land-use patterns as derived from analysis of Landsat data valid for 1992/93. These two different land cover datasets capture well the conversion of wetlands to agriculture in south Florida during the twentieth century. Use of current land surface properties resulted in colder simulated minimum temperatures and temperatures that remained below freezing for a longer period at locations of key agricultural production centers in south Florida that were once natural wetlands. Examination of time series of the surface energy budget from one of the cases reveals that when natural land cover is used, a persistent moisture ¯ux from the underlying wetlands during the nighttime hours served to prevent the development of below-freezing temperatures at those same locations. When the model results were subjected to an important sensitivity factor, the depth of standing water in the wetlands, the outcome remained consistent. These results provide another example of the potential for humans to perturb the climate system in ways that can have severe socioeconomic consequences by altering the land surface alone. 1. Introduction 2002). By some estimates, more than half of the fresh vegetables consumed by Americans during the core win- Agriculture has always been the mainstay of Florida's ter months are harvested in south Florida (Hansen et al. economy. In particular, Florida-based production of cit- 1999). rus, winter fresh vegetables, and sugarcane make up a Moderate freezes, which can destroy tender vegetable large share of the U.S. market for these products. During crops and may damage or kill foliage and blossoms on 2002, Florida ranked ®rst in the nation for cash receipts citrus trees, occur with some regularity in northern and of citrus crops, and either ®rst or second for several central areas of the Florida peninsula, but they are not fresh fruit and vegetable crops, including tomatoes, typically so severe as to kill or result in permanent wood strawberries, snap beans, squash, sweet corn, bell pep- damage to citrus trees (Weischet and Caviedes 1987). pers, watermelons, radishes, and avocados (FDACS Nevertheless, historic winter freezes occasionally have wrought severe destruction on northern and central Flor- *Current af®liation: NCEP/Environmental Modeling Center, Camp ida agriculture. Catastrophic losses have continued to Springs, Maryland. impact Florida agriculture in recent years, despite im- provements in frost and freeze protection technologies and continued southward migration of production to less Corresponding author address: Curtis H. Marshall, NCEP/Envi- ronmental Center, 5200 Auth Road, Rm. 207, Camp Springs, MD freeze-prone regions. Attaway (1997) documents the cit- 20746-4304. rus-killing freezes that have resulted in successive mi- E-mail: [email protected] grations of the citrus industry southward over the past q 2004 American Meteorological Society Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/06/21 11:04 PM UTC 2244 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 132 150 yr, culminating in what he refers to as ``The Cat- freezes are more likely during winters in which the astrophic Period from 1981±1989.'' Around the turn of phase of ENSO is neutral (see online at http://www. the twentieth century, a series of citrus-tree-killing coaps.fsu.edu/;grant/¯climate/spotlight). freezes prompted a dramatic southward shift in pro- These studies address the role of large-scale atmo- duction from northern to central areas of the state. Prior spheric processes in the occurrence of killing freezes to that time, orange groves were planted as far north as and the subsequent southward migration of Florida's Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Historically, northern and citrus and vegetable industries. However, an interesting central areas of the peninsula have been preferred over and largely unexamined question involves whether it is less freeze-prone areas farther south for agricultural de- also possible that the conversion of natural wetlands to velopment because the well-drained, sandy soils of the accommodate the expanding agricultural production in more northern portions of the state provide a less dis- south Florida could itself have an impact on the inci- ease-prone environment than the wetlands and saturated dence or severity of freeze events in those areas. organic soils of south Florida. Other studies have shown that the dramatic landscape After the southward shift in citrus cultivation to cen- transformation that occurred on the peninsula during the tral Florida during the early twentieth century, produc- twentieth century, including those areas of wetlands that tion ¯ourished. However, during the 1980s, a series of have been converted to agricultural land, may have had devastating freezes affected the groves of the central an impact on the weather of south Florida by altering peninsula. Following these events, evidence suggests the spatial distribution of surface sensible heat ¯ux, that perceptions changed permanently amongst Florida's physical evaporation, and transpiration. For example, citrus community regarding the risk of freeze in central Pielke et al. (1999) and Marshall et al. (2004) suggest areas of the state. Many producers elected to relocate that the draining of the Kissimmee ¯oodplain during the to the less freeze-prone wetlands regions of south Flor- twentieth century may have resulted in a weakening of ida, resulting in another dramatic shift southward in the sea-breeze circulations, which in turn resulted in a citrus production on the peninsula (Whittaker 1985; spatial redistribution of warm-season convective rainfall Miller 1991). Prior to and during this time, wetlands in patterns. Their modeling results also agree with obser- south Florida were being drained and converted to ag- vational evidence that suggests an overall decrease in ricultural land, particularly for winter vegetable and sug- regional summer rainfall and an increase in daytime arcane production. In many cases, citrus producers re- maximum temperature. To date, however, relatively few located to areas in and near converted wetlands. Figure studies have addressed any possible impacts of the land- 1 illustrates the number of citrus trees by county as well scape change on the cool-season weather of the pen- as the key areas of vegetable production in Florida dur- insula. The purpose of this paper is to present the results ing 2000. of a modeling study that was designed to investigate The anomalous cold waves around the turn of the whether anthropogenic landscape change in south Flor- twentieth century and during the 1980s that resulted in ida, and in particular the conversion of natural wetlands killing freezes and the southward migration of Florida's to agricultural land, could have an impact on the fre- agricultural production centers may have been linked to quency and/or severity of damaging freeze events in that mechanisms associated with large-scale circulation region. anomalies in the ocean±atmosphere system (Haddock 1981, 1984; Mogil et al. 1984). Previous investigators 2. Background and methods have noted the relationship of Florida freeze events to the Paci®c±North American pattern (PNA; Horel and a. Background on examined freeze events Wallace 1981) and the phases of the El NinÄo±Southern Three recent freeze events that resulted in damage to Oscillation (ENSO; Ropelewski and Halpert 1986) and south Florida agriculture were analyzed for the study the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO; Rogers 1984). presented in this paper. These freezes occurred on 26 These studies show that freezes are more likely in south December 1983, 25 December 1989, and 19 January Florida when the PNA (NAO) is in a positive (negative) 1997. The meteorological conditions associated with phase. The combination of these phases is often asso- these events are typical of those that lead to agricul- ciated with intrusions of Arctic high pressure at the turally damaging freezes in south Florida. Figures 2, 3, surface and accompanying troughs in the mid- and up- and 4 illustrate the sea level pressure (SLP) and 850- per-level synoptic patterns (e.g., 500-hPa geopotential hPa temperature patterns for the 1983, 1989, and 1997 height) over the southeastern United States. In their re- events, respectively. In all three cases, signi®cant sur- view article relating all three phenomena to the occur- face high pressure, of Arctic origin, had migrated south- rence of agriculturally important freezes in central and ward and eastward over the continental United States south Florida, Downton and Miller (1993) concluded during the previous few days.
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