Robert Feder

Pine rockland of southern Florida is one of our planet’s rarest ecosystems and is found where limestone is expressed at the ground surface — the Miami Rock Ridge, the Florida Keys, and Big Cypress National Preserve. Over the past thirty years, there has been an effort to sample community vegetation plots in pine rockland fragments on Miami Rock Ridge, and preliminary analysis indicated that alpha diversity is decreasing for seven plots. This fire-dependent habitat lies within the increasingly complex urban-agricultural matrix of Miami-Dade County. I will determine how the surrounding land uses and fire ecology data relate to species richness and composition of twenty pine rockland fragments.