Florida...second time around

Completing his litttle detour into Georgia, Mark headed south yesterday from Thomasville and back into Florida. By my reckoning, it's the only state whose border Mark will have crossed three times on his journey. All others he's crossed twice except for.....?

And for those who like the occasional 'big picture', here's the latest one with blue GPS markers creeping ever nearer to the Atlantic...

Between Thomasville and the Florida border, the landscape of southern Georgia is quite different from the intensively farmed irrigated land which we saw along Mark's route two days ago. Approaching the border, forest once again becomes the dominant land use as cultivated land gives way to a mixed land use of trees, swampy areas and some patches of grassland and cultivation. At the Florida border, the view is like this....
You may notice one or two areas of surface water in the view above. They are just a few of literally hundreds of small 'prairie lakes' and ponds in this part of north central Florida which have taken me a couple of days to research. They are related to the underlying geology and unlike most lakes which are the result of in-flowing surface drainage, these lakes represent places where the water table and underground aquifers are intersected by surface relief. The low points in the relief which permit the appearance of water at the surface are called sink holes and represent dissolved joints in underlying limestone rock which permit access to the water table. During periods of drought, when the water table drops, these lakes may dry up completely as explained here.

One of the largest of the prairie lakes in Florida is Lake Miccosukee which lies just a couple of miles west of the route Mark followed south from the Florida border. Like many of the prairie lakes, Lake Miccosukee is hypereutrophic. This means that the water is nutrient rich and frequently has an algal bloom. If you check out the lake in Google and zoom in close, you will have no difficulty in identifying the algal bloom. below is a photo of the lake 'borrowed' from Flickr...
The small town of Monticello is named after the Virginia estate of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. However, other than carrying its name, the town has no other connection with the former president. Close to Monticello some more interesting land use patterns hove into view....

I have to admit to being a bit 'stumped' by these. It is clearly reafforestation of some sort - patches of the former forest cover are still visible nearby. I do wonder if it could simply be that the trees are planted along contours to enhance the impression of relief once they grow. Any other ideas?

Also in the vicinity of Monticello are these land use patterns but I think they are more easily explained. These look to me to be areas of intensive cultivation of vegetable and salad crops in fields sheeted with polythene (plasticulture as it is sometimes called) to help retain soil moisture. You can also see an algal bloom of one of the prairie lakes described above.

South of Monticello the next major settlement along Mark's route yesterday was the town of Parry which has the dubious distinction of being a town with a bad smell and the focus of a long running environmental dispute. Both arise from this industrial enterprise....

This is the Buckeye Cellulose Corporation's plant at Foley just to the south east of Parry. It uses slash pine timber and cotton fiber as the principal raw materials in the manufacture of the company's specialty cellulose and absorbent cellulose products (most of which end up in nappies). The region surrounding Buckeye's plant in Perry, Florida(the Foley Plant) has a high concentration of slash pine timber, which enables Buckeye to purchase adequate supplies of a species well suited to its products at an attractive cost. The plant is the largest employer in Taylor county.

It is located on the Fernholloway river which is now heavily polluted by toxic factory effluent. The environmental damage has been the subject of extensive legal wrangling involving the state, environmental groups, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Buckeye Cellulose Corporation who have proposed building a pipeline to take effluent directly to the Gulf. Environmental campaigners believe that will only relocate the problem.

And finally.... the information on the Artemis web diary today means that we can locate precisely the motel Mark used in Mayo last night. What a small world we live in though I'll bet that thought hasn't gone through Mark's mind lately!



And the view across the road this morning would have been of the Lafayette County Courthouse.