Chapter Two: The Physical Enviroment

Florida, as I came to lean, has a lot to it's topography. Since there are many interesting features of the state, I will be mentioning a few of them that particularly stood out to me.

1) Rivers: 

When I first read up on the topography of Florida, the first thing that stood out to me were the rivers. The state of Florida contains more than 1,700 rivers, including streams and creeks.

The longest river is the St. Johns, which empties into the Atlantic 19 mi (42 km) east of Jacksonville: estimates of its length range from 273 to 318 mi.


2) Everglades

Almost all the southeastern peninsula and the entire southern end are covered by the Everglades, the world's largest sawgrass swamp, with an area of approximately 5,000 sq mi (13,000 sq km). The Everglades is, in a sense, a huge river, in which water flows south–southwest from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. No point in the Everglades is more than 7 ft (2 m) above sea level. Its surface is largely submerged during the rainy season—April to November—and becomes a muddy expanse in the dry months. Slight elevations, known as hammocks, support clumps of cypress and the only remaining stand of mahogany in the continental US. To the west and north of the Everglades is Big Cypress Swamp, covering about 2,400 sq mi (6,200 sq km), which contains far less surface water.