In some ways, the concept behind the South Florida Terrestrial Ecosystem Lab  originated in the National Audubon Society’s Ecosystem Research Unit.  Mike Duever (Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary) was the Director, and Mike Ross (Florida Keys) a Principal Investigator.  The idea was that questions critical to natural area management were best addressed through an ecosystem approach that integrated basic and applied research.  A reasonable conceptual model of the systems we were studying helped to put narrow research results in context, and encouraged collaboration with scientists across a range of disciplines. 

In 1993, when Dr. Ron Jones inaugurated the Southeast Environmental Research Program (now a Center) at FIU, Mike Ross was among the first members of the SERC faculty.  Since then, SERC has grown to be a multi-disciplinary unit staffed by many of South Florida's leading scientists working hand in hand in addressing many of the ecological issues facing South Florida's environment.

Today the South Florida Terrestrial Ecosystem Lab, one of several research labs associated with SERC, carries a field-oriented, multi-disciplinary approach to understanding, describing, preserving, and managing the vegetative communities of Southern Florida from the Lower Keys to the shore of Biscayne Bay and the wetlands and forested communities of Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve. As a result, we've had the opportunity to work and form strong partnerships with many of the leading government agencies responsible for the management of South Florida's natural areas.

 

At present, we are working on several projects including intra-zonal studies within the ridge and slough, marl prairie, coastal wetlands, rock ridge and Florida Keys landscapes, in addition to inter-zonal (cross landscape) studies, restoration studies, experimentation, remote sensing and classification.