Limestone is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of CaCO3. Limestone forms when these minerals precipitate out of water containing dissolved calcium. This can take place through both biological and nonbiological processes, though biological processes, such as the accumulation of corals and shells in the sea, have likely been more important for the last 540 million years. Limestone often contains fossils which provide scientists with information on ancient environments and on the evolution of life.
Broward County is a county in Florida, United States, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with 1,944,375 residents as of the 2020 census. Its county seat and most populous city is Fort Lauderdale, which had a population of 182,760 as of 2020. The county is part of the South Florida region of the state.
The Everglades is a natural region of flooded grasslands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles (160 km) long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades experiences a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Throughout the 20th century, the Everglades suffered significant loss of habitat and environmental degradation.
Florida City is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. It is the southernmost municipality in the South Florida metropolitan area. Florida City is primarily a Miami suburb and a major agricultural area. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 13,085, up from 11,245 in 2010.
The Florida Keys are a coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Miami and extend in a gentle arc south-southwest and then westward to Key West, the westernmost of the inhabited islands, and on to the uninhabited Dry Tortugas. The islands lie along the Florida Straits, dividing the Atlantic Ocean to the east from the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest, and defining one edge of Florida Bay. The southern part of Key West is 93 miles (150 km) from Cuba. The Keys are located between about 24.3 and 25.5 degrees North latitude.
Ooids are small, spheroidal, "coated" (layered) sedimentary grains, usually composed of calcium carbonate, but sometimes made up of iron- or phosphate-based minerals. Ooids usually form on the sea floor, most commonly in shallow tropical seas. After being buried under additional sediment, these ooid grains can be cemented together to form a sedimentary rock called an oolite. Oolites usually consist of calcium carbonate; these belong to the limestone rock family. Pisoids are similar to ooids, but are larger than 2 mm in diameter, often considerably larger, as with the pisoids in the hot springs at Carlsbad in the Czech Republic.
Florida Bay is the bay located between the southern end of the Florida mainland and the Florida Keys in the United States. It is a large, shallow estuary that while connected to the Gulf of Mexico, has limited exchange of water due to shallow mudbanks dividing the bay into many basins or lakes. The banks separate the bay into basins, each with its own unique physical characteristics.
Oolite or oölite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers. Strictly, oolites consist of ooids of diameter 0.25–2 millimetres; rocks composed of ooids larger than 2 mm are called pisolites. The term oolith can refer to oolite or individual ooids.
The Miami metropolitan area is a coastal metropolitan area in southeastern Florida. It is the ninth-largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the United States, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States, and the largest metropolitan area in Florida. It is also known as South Florida, SoFlo, SoFla, the Gold Coast, Southeast Florida, the Tri-County Area, or Greater Miami, and officially as the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area. With a population of 6.18 million, its population exceeds 31 of the nation's 50 states as of 2023. It comprises the three most populated counties in the state, Miami-Dade County, Broward County, and Palm Beach County, which rank as the first, second, and third-most populous counties in the state, respectively. Miami-Dade County, with 2,701,767 people in 2020, is the seventh-most populous county in the United States.
The Lincolnshire Limestone Formation is a geological formation in England, part of the Inferior Oolite Group of the (Bajocian) Middle Jurassic strata of eastern England. It was formed around 170 million years ago, in a shallow, warm sea on the margin of the London Platform and has estuarine beds above and below it. There are two sub-divisions, the Upper and Lower Lincolnshire Limestone.
The Biscayne Aquifer, named after Biscayne Bay, is a surficial aquifer. It is a shallow layer of highly permeable limestone under a portion of South Florida. The area it underlies includes Broward County, Miami-Dade County, Monroe County, and Palm Beach County, a total of about 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2).
Robert S. Carr is an American archaeologist and the current executive director of The Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, Inc. He specializes in Southeastern archaeology, with particular emphasis on archaeology in Florida. He has also conducted fieldwork in the Bahamas.
Shark Valley is a geological depression at the head of the Shark River Slough in far western Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. It is currently part of Everglades National Park. Shark Valley empties into Shark River in the Ten Thousand Islands of Monroe County. Shark Valley characteristically includes sawgrass prairie that floods during the rainy season, hence the name "river of grass"—Pa-Hay-Okee, from the Mikasuki language—for such marshes in the Everglades. Shark Valley features a Visitor Center with educational displays, a park video, an underwater camera and informational brochures. The entrance to Shark Valley is located along Tamiami Trail near the Miami-Dade–Collier County line.
The Maquoketa Group is an assemblage of several geologic formations. It is Upper Ordovician in age and named for the Maquoketa River in Iowa. It exists in Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. It is equivalent to the all but the basal formations of the Cincinnati Group in Ohio. Illinois and Indiana are the only states where the Maquoketa is considered a group. In other states it is a formation. The Maquoketa was deposited in a shallow intercontinental sea. Most of the clastic sediments are derived from the Appalachians, which were being raised at the end of the Ordovician. To a lesser degree some of the sediments were derived from the Ozark highlands to the southwest.
The Arcadia Formation is an Early Miocene geologic formation in Florida, United States. It is part of the Hawthorn Group.
The Okeechobean Sea was a Cenozoic eutropical subsea, which along with the Choctaw Sea, occupied the eastern Gulf of Mexico basin system bounding Florida.
The South Florida rocklands ecoregion, in the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, occurs in southern Florida and the Florida Keys in the United States, where they would naturally cover an area of 2,100 km2 (810 sq mi). These forests form on limestone outcrops with very thin soil; the higher elevation separating them from other habitats such as coastal marshes and marl prairies. On mainland Florida, rocklands exist primarily on the Miami Rock Ridge, which extends from the Miami River south to Everglades National Park. South Florida rocklands are further divided into pine rocklands and rockland hammocks.
The Key Largo Limestone is a geologic formation in Florida. It is a fossilized coral reef. The formation is exposed along the upper and middle Florida Keys from Soldier Key to the Bahia Honda Channel. The islands form a long narrow arc concentric with the inner edge of the Florida Straits and with the Florida Reef. The limestone includes fossils of corals, mollusks and bryozoans. Fossilized coral head formations are visible in some exposures. The Key Largo Limestone continues in a narrow band underwater just offshore of the coast of Florida north of Soldier Key to the middle of the Palm Beach County coast, and southward just offshore of the lower Florida Keys to the Dry Tortugas.
Hunts Bay Oolite is an oolitic Carboniferous limestone geological formation found in the south Wales region. It is named after Hunts Bay on the Gower peninsula, south-south west of Bishopston, where a significant amount of the limestone forms the cliffs there.
The Atlantic Coastal Ridge is a geomorphological feature paralleling the Atlantic coast of Florida from the border with Georgia to Miami-Dade County, where it transitions into the Miami Rock Ridge. For most of its length it consists of one or more relict beach ridges created when the sea level was about 30 feet (9.1 m) higher than at present. The southernmost part of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge was created as a carbonate platform during the same period. Before human modification for agriculture and urban development, much of the ridge hosted scrub vegetation.
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