Florida and California are often thought of as being polar opposites from one another, but what similarities might they have? Well there’s Disney, imported palm trees, the misconception that everyone lives on the beach, Hollywoods, orange groves, but the main similarity I want to explore is that both have had massive growth through the past century due to the high demand for living in places where you are less likely to die from things like hypothermia half the year among other things. This demand for development has meant that a diverse array of biomes have been simplified and misrepresented so they could be drastically changed to accommodate the demand to live in these temperate climate zones.
At first glance, many might think there aren't any similarities at all. First, these two states reside on opposite ends of the country and our political spectrum and are seemingly as ecologically different as can be. Los Angeles gets about 13 inches of rain per year and Orlando gets 53 inches on average. LA County is mostly a Mediterranean climate characterized by cold wet winters, getting most of its rainfall between October-February, and hot dry summers. Florida on the other hand, is a humid subtropical zone with almost daily afternoon rainstorms between June-September. The highest point in Florida is the "lowest hight point" in the USA, Britton Hill at 345 ft above sea level while California has the highest point on the continental USA just three hours from LA at Mount Whitney, a staggering 14.505 ft.
With so many opposites what could these two places have in common? Well I've lived in Southern California and Central Florida, so that is another commonality. Both of my homes share extremely biodiverse ecosystems with many different kinds of biomes but they often get lumped together as “just a desert” or “just a swamp”. Why is that? And who does it benefit to misrepresent the amazing array of ecologies that exist in both states?
Many think Los Angeles is a desert because it is arid and doesn't rain for half the year. But most of Southern California’s is actually in a Mediterranean climate zone, characterized by short, wet, and cold winter, and long, dry and hot summers. Our ecosystems include chaparral, oak woodlands, pine forests, grasslands, coastal sage scrub, and yes... some true deserts. Due to the aridity of the region, the long dry season, and summer dormancy, many fall back on only "desert" to lump it all together but all the photos below were taken in Southern California and look at the diversity!
Florida’s ecosystems might look very different than Southern California’s but the habit of falling back on an all inclusive but very misleading word to lump it all together is the same. Despite having palm scrub, oak woodlands, riverine hardwoods, sand pine scrub, longleaf pine sandhills, most people just think swamp when they think of Florida. All of the photos below were taken on an 80 mile backpacking trip I did along the Ocala section of the Florida Trail. This section is actually the driest of the entire Florida Trail and features many distinct biomes. Again, look at the diversity found just in these 80 miles!
So the true diversity of California and Florida get lumped together under desert and swamp respectively, but why? In the past 100 years many people have moved to these two states, attracted by our mild winters and a million other reasons. Both Florida and California were advertised mostly as a beautiful paradise but the realities of developing the land quickly was not a pretty sight. The extremes of our original ecosystems were used to justify the many engineering projects that were needed to make the kind of paradise developers wanted to sell. With so many moving here, who would know the difference? Of course the desert needs to be irrigated! And of course the swamp needs to be drained! How else could we live in these amazing places with mostly no snow? Deserts and swamps seem to be on opposite sides of the biome spectrum but they are united in being landscapes that were seen (by European developers at least) as inhospitable to humans and therefore needed to be drastically changed for modern development. Whether the ecosystems being changed were actually deserts or swamps was inconsequential.
Often, the words desert and swamp are both used to describe land of little value. By misrepresenting the diversity of ecosystems in both states it was easier to change and develop the land as needed but even the environmentalist movement was slow to see the value in wetlands and deserts. It was easy for early European environmentalists to see the value of preserving places like Yosemite, Sequoia, and Mount Rainier as dramatic peaks and large trees have always been easy to see beauty in and therefore see a need to set aside from development. They understood forests, and rivers, and grand vistas as worth setting aside (the manner in which this was done is now under scrutiny) and it is easy to see why so many wanted to preserve places like Yosemite National Park seen below.
However, places like Joshua Tree and Death Valley weren’t National Parks until 1994 and on the east coast, wetlands like The Everglades or Congaree National Parks were not designated as parks until 1947 and 2003 respectively.
“This was a new way of thinking about national parks. “I have been laboring under the impression that the yardstick to use in selecting national parks was that of the showman, that it was the spectacular we were to consider,” one congressman told Fairchild, the founder of Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Gardens. “Now you were giving us a new thought, and a very interesting one, that a piece of ground which has educational value, scientific value, rises to the heigh of national park value.”
― Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise
Not only is there so much more to Southern California and Florida than deserts and swamps, there is so much more to deserts and swamps themselves! When I lived in Florida I thought deserts were just places with sand dunes but Antarctica and the arctic combined have 5,000,000 kilometers of polar desert defined as such since most of the water is locked up in glaciers and ice sheets and contain the largest desert in the world. Other kinds of deserts are sub-tropical (the Sahara), Coastal Deserts (found off the coast of Chile), Rain Shadow Deserts (SoCal’s own Death Valley), and Interior Deserts (the Gobi Desert). Below you can see some of the vast differences just between deserts here California, Utah, and New Mexico.
Similarly there are many kinds of swamp. First off Swamp is not the correct word to start off with, there are acutally three different terms that are important in understanding these eco biomes, Wetlands, Marshes, and Swamps. Wetlands connect areas of land and water and may have a water table above ground all year or it may fall just below the surface level where it may seem dry but can still support aquatic life. So, both Marshes and Swamps are kinds of wetlands but their most defining difference is Marshes have mostly grasses and herbaceous plants while Swamps are defined by the predominant type of tree present. Both Marshes and Swamps can be either fresh water, salt water, or a mixture of both.
So we can see there is a lot of complexity to the environment of both Southern California and Florida, even the biomes used to generalize this complexity, desert and swamp, have their own depth and merits. Despite this nuance and biodeversity both Florida and California were rebranded as a particular idea of "Paradise". Who rebranded these states? Mostly the developers, first in the agriculture boom of the 1800's and then housing booms of the early to mid 1900's. Florida and California, despite the reality of their ecosystems being very different, are advertised in very similar ways in these vintage crate labels and travel posters. The only striking difference is the presence of snow capped mountains in California, otherwise both have verdant fields of crops, and lots of ocean, swimming pools, bathing suits, and of course, palm trees.
So what was lost through these booms in development? Despite the advertisements showing SoCal and Florida as paradise lands of plenty that could keep giving, there were and are limits to what their actual ecosystems can support. That isn't a message that sells exponentially though. Whether LA is a desert or not (its not) it *is* a semi-arid climate that brings water in from hundreds of miles away to support the people and plants we have planted here. Although we are not just a desert currently, our lack of regard for the scarcity of water is moving us towards full aridity with a dwindling water supply. Pictured below is the much beloved but awfully abused LA River. LA was full of wetlands, rivers, and creeks but we drained 90 percent of the wetlands and channelized our waterways to prevent flooding and now we have to get our water all the way from Northern California! There is a lot written about this but here is a good start if you want to read more.
And whether Florida is all a swamp or not (its not) it *is* a low lying state with many drained wetlands that now have home built on old floodplains. These homes are on the front lines of ecological disaster from sea levels rising. Florida's history is also closely related to the control and often mismanagement of water. The photo below is taken from the Marjorie Harris Carr Greenway a pretty place but one full of our engineering hubris and ecological destruction. Click here to learn more.
So although seemingly different in many ways we can see some similarities between these states on opposites ends of the country and political spectrum. Native peoples know these lands for what they are but ever since the Spanish landed in both Florida and California, many of us are transplants to these ever growing regions. This is me. I have lived in LA for 14 years. I am "from Florida" but just by one generation, my Grandpa moved from upstate New York for the many jobs created in Florida after NASA opened in Cape Canaveral. Each move is a chance for information about the true ecologies of these states to be lost. How can we protect what we don't know? We have to look beyond the misguided assumptions caused by the confusion of moving to a new region and we have to see past the developers paradise. We need to experience our landscapes for what that really are. Knowing the origins of the land we live on is crucial and the first step to making sure the places we call home will still be habitable for generations to come.
Display your support for the biodiversity of Southern California beyond only our deserts by buying my LA Is Not A Desert sticker here.
Comments