Florida’s Big Dig

Especially before the Hispanic period, the dominant form of transportation was by use of the many colorful, small, slender light draft boats on the myriad canals. Over a period of several hundred years, farmers continued to grow flowers, fruits, and vegetables atop the mulch and muck lands dug by hand from the bottom of Lake Xochimilcho.

Farmers then carefully placed large quantities of mulch and bottom lands above water on various varieties of long fibrous plants tied together in bundles. Workers then tied the bundles in line to small trees in the waterway. The topography of the land was not exclusively reclaimed lake land called chinampas. The colorful boats for tourists became known as trajineras. Tourists now share with farmers the 110 miles of canals snaking their way throughout the lush centuries-old muck lands growing above the surface of the lake.

By the 20th century, the intricate complex of lakes, artificially made land, and canals had dwindled down to just a relatively small system of canals. Today the canals are still fed by fresh-water springs. But Mexico City’s population growth has stressed Xochimilco’s aquifers and cause subsidence of Xochimilco’s lake beds. Xochimilco’s  ecosystem of juniper trees and other rare species of flora and fauna are under siege by various external threats that originate with population explosion. These threats and stresses upon the land and water have resulted in UNESCO to list Xochimilcho as a World Heritage Site.

http://youtu.be/YzCULxAmkRU
Approximately one hundred years after President Theodore Roosevelt embarked upon the construction of the original 48-mile-long Panamal Canal,  the Republic of Panama began the final steps toward the completion of a more modern waterway in the summer of 2015.

The new project modernizes Lake Gatun and the the most difficult of the original cuts, the Culebra Cut, through nearly incorrigible  mountainous terrain.  So arduous was the Cut, the work hospitalized its manager, Col. David Gaillard, cousin of James L. Colee, the longest-serving director of the privately owned Florida canal company that would finance and build (1881-1912) what would become the toll-free federally controlled Florida section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in 1929.  James’s cousin David would not be able to attend the opening ceremonies of the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, led by the Army Corps of Engineers.

This videotape summarizes the one-hundred year-long history of one of America’s most expensive capital projects outside the United States to its controversial turnover to the Republic of Panama to Panamax, the modernization of the Panama Canal and the addition of a third modern lock to meet the challenges of  larger cargo vessels of the twenty-first century.  Tap on the link at the top of the new page after clicking the link at the top of this page.

Obviously listed for protection on UNESCO’s listing of World Heritage Sites, Lake Baikal is the oldest lake in the world at 25 million years.  It is the deepest lake in the world at 5,378 feet, and most expansive, occupying over 12,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface.  Lake Baikal contains twenty percent of the unfrozen freshwater on the planet.

The climatic asymmetry accounts for the unique variety of plants and other flora.  The western basin has light coniferous forests and mountain steppes while in the eastern basin, pine forests predominate.  Mountains completely surround the lake.  The advancing and retreating of glaciers did not scour the bottom of this high altitude lake, as in the case of other high altitude lakes during the ice age.

Lake Baikal supports 1,700 plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found no where else in the world.  Thus, it is one of the most bio-diverse lakes on the planet.