Theorizing Land-Cover and Land-Use Change: The Case of the Florida Everglades and Its Degradation

Abstract

This paper possesses two related objectives. The first is to unite the bid-rent model of von Thünen and urban theorists with historical analysis in the interest of providing a theoretical approach to the comprehension of regional land-cover and land-use change. The second objective is to deploy the theoretical approach in an attempt to account for a specific change process, namely loss of wetlands in South Florida. Recently, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers published a paper addressing this issue (Meindl, Alderman, and Waylen 2002). Meindl, Alderman, and Waylen describe the impact of claims making on efforts to drain and sell land in South Florida during a critical period in the early 20th century. The present paper is put forward, in part, to provide additional context. In particular, we identify claims making and the development discourse it legitimated as part of a complex evolution in the region's socionature, and the regimes governing land-cover and land-use change that led to wetlands reclamation. To explain these regime shifts, we criticize conventional bid-rent theory and develop a model integrating urban and agricultural land use whose structure is affected by development. We then deploy this model to the Everglades case, using historical narrative and remotely sensed land-cover data. We conclude the paper calling for integrated theoretical approaches in attempts to comprehend land-cover and land-use change and associated environmental problems.

Key Words:

• Land-cover and land-use change
• Florida Everglades
• von Thünen

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Roger Soles, former director of the U.S. Man and the Biosphere (MAB) program, for his early support of this work, which was funded under the project entitled, “Ecological Sustainability and Human Institutions: Case Studies of Three Biosphere Reserves.” Conversations on the topic with Barney Warf were especially valuable. Finally, several anonymous reviewerssubstantially improved the text. We remain responsible for any remaining errors.

Notes

¹Gold Coast=Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach Counties.

²Gulf Coast=Collier and Lee Counties.

³Central=Hendry County.

¹Statistics were developed from the 1910 U.S. Census data for Dade County, Florida (which includes current Broward and Dade counties). A systematic sampling regime was employed. Starting with the first entry of each enumeration district every 20th individual was sampled. Individuals who did not list employment were not included. Individuals with employment in the next entry were chosen instead. The total sample was 601 individuals. The census data was accessed via the website Ancestry.com.

²Percentage of farm labor is likely to be a lower bound because another 8 percent of workers defined themselves as odd-job laborers. It is assumed that a significant percent of these individuals were likely employed in seasonal agriculture.

³Other primary industry workers included those involved in fishing and logging and related raw lumber activities.

⁴Transport workers include those who directed/drove and/or maintained wagons, railroads/trains, trucks, boats, and steamships.

⁵The only employees that specifically mentioned hotel employment were porters.

Source: U.S. Census for 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990.

1. For an exception, see Jarosz (1993; 1996).

2. The term Everglades is often used as a catchall for the region's natural systems, but, in fact, these systems only constitute part of the South Florida environment. The Big Cypress Swamp lies just west of the Everglades marsh and possesses a drainage basin of about 6000 km², mostly in Collier county (Carter 1974). Although the Big Cypress was extensively logged in the early part of the 20th century, the most dramatic changes in landcover and ecology have taken place in the Everglades marsh, an extensive system that once covered about 12,000 km², much of the land between Lake Okeechobee and the southern tip of the Floridan peninsula.

3. Despite the legislative action, title transfers from the federal government were long delayed and did not occur for the Everglades proper until 1903 (McCally 1999).

4. Early land grants were very large. The Pensacola and Atlantic railroad received 8000 hectares per mile of railroad across the Florida Panhandle. The Gainesville, Ocala, and Charlotte railroad was granted 4000 hectares. Later, Flagler received about 3200 per mile of track (Blake 1980).

5. As early as 1848, the State of Florida had commissioned studies of the agricultural potential of South Florida, when claims making actually begins with the rosy assessment of Buckingham Smith (Blake 1980; Meindl, Alderman, and Waylen 2002).

6. For example, the developer Bolles pledged to buy about 200,000 hectares in 1908 over an 8-year period, at $4.94 per hectare. He deeded 73,000 hectares to his Florida Fruit Lands Company, land that was subsequently subdivided into 12,000 individual farms that were sold by lottery for $250 each, to be paid in monthly installments of $10 (Blake 1980).

7. The Seminole trade generated good income for indigenous hunters at the end of the 19th century (Derr 1989).

8. By about 1900, Palm Beach already had two large hotels, the Royal Poinciana with 1150 rooms, and the Breakers, with 400 rooms (Derr 1989). The Royal Palm of Miami had 450 rooms, and tourist dollars spent yearly probably exceeded $1million (Derr 1989). On the back haul after depositing their well-heeled visitors, the railroads transported tropical fruits north in the two-way trade that was Flagler's original vision (Blake 1980).

9. The levee is an extensive structure just west of the coastal ridge; the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) is a drained and diked extent of land (about 4000 km²) just south of Lake Okeechobee; the Water Conservation Areas are very large water retention and regulation areas west of the levee, and north of Everglades National Park.

10. Since 1970, more than 500,000 individuals have immigrated to the region, bringing their labor power, entrepreneurial skills, capital, and international connections. Augmenting this new resident population has been an upsurge in short-term visitors from Latin America, coming to South Florida as tourists to shop and for recreation.

11. Tourism in South Florida was initially rustic and focused on fishing and hunting. As railroads made the region accessible, visitors—mostly wealthy northerners in the early years—availed themselves of other activities. In that locally grown produce, embellished by hotel chefs, remained necessary to the tourist sector, these new activities, made possible by additional service workers, can be conceptualized as adding value to the units of farm produce that found their way to the dinner table. From the regional development perspective, tourism functions as an export base, given that dollars spent originate from outside the locality providing the tourism service.

12. Alternatively, under a coupled regime, low agricultural suitability of natural lands can predispose them to encroachment by urban, as opposed to agricultural, use. At region scale, a great deal of variability is to be expected in soils and agricultural potential.

13. The main pre-Colombian group was the Calusa. The Seminoles with whom the US government fought three wars were migrants from Creek tribes north of Florida (Swanton 1946).

14. There also appears to be some ambiguity in Meindl, Alderman, and Waylen (2002) regarding the suggestion that claims made by Wright were “wrong.” Does “wrong” refer to engineering error, or does it possess a normative ecological sense? That is, was Wright “wrong” in promoting drainage in the Everglades because he misinterpreted rainfall statistics, or because drainage led, over the long run, to ecological crisis? Regarding the first sense of “wrong,” it should be pointed out that drainage was ultimately successful in South Florida, if measured in strictly engineering terms. Although this is admitted—somewhat after the fact—by Meindl, Alderman, and Waylen (2002), it does call into question the suggestion that Wright was wrong about the engineering problem because he used rainfall statistics that underestimated the severity of the region's flooding. This suggestion is correct, but in a limited historical sense, for as the Army Corps of Engineers discovered in the 1950s, it was possible to reclaim a great deal of acreage, protect the coastal ridge from floods, and conserve water for urban consumption by constructing the Everglades Agricultural Area, the Perimeter Levee, and the Water Conservation Areas. Wright was wrong, in the final analysis, about the costs of drainage. Regarding the normative notion of “wrong,” Wright was clearly also wrong in that he did not foresee or think much about the environmental consequences of drainage. But in this he was no more “wrong” than the vast majority of his contemporaries, all of whom made an ideological contribution to the region's environmental degradation.