Rescuing the Everglades

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To build the USGS-sponsored models of Everglades habitats, DeAngelis and his team first gather huge amounts of empirical data on day-to-day water levels, vegetation, temperatures, and the life cycles and behavioral characteristics of different animal species. (This information has been collected over the years by biologists in the field.) Then, with the help of advanced modeling techniques and specialized computational software, they use the data to create a habitat suitability index for threatened species in each of 70,000 500-by-500-meter "cells" in their specialized map of the Everglades.

"What we do, essentially, is to translate the empirical data into algorithms and then calculate how suitable each particular cell will be for a particular threatened species under various conditions in the future," DeAngelis explains. Some of the models are so detailed that they simulate populations individual by individual, projecting what would happen to each one under different CERP hydrology plans and other ecological scenarios. The goal is to help regional land-use planners make decisions that will better protect the hundreds of animal species in the complex Everglades ecosystem.

"We successfully simulated the observed increase in snail kites from near extinction in the 1970s to a high population of about 3,000 some years ago," DeAngelis says, "and now we're using the model to try to understand the more recent declines of these threatened birds." His team has also used its models to simulate population change in about a dozen other endangered species, including the Florida panther, the wood stork, and the Cape Sable seaside sparrow.

"Don is known worldwide for his mathematical modeling in ecology," says Douglas Donalson, an ecologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Florida. "He's a meticulous scientist, and I don't think there's any doubt his work is having a significant impact on the effort to restore the Everglades."

Adds Leo Sternberg, a professor of biology at the University of Miami and an expert on Florida vegetation: "Don's models are an indispensable component of any discussion of Everglades restoration. They're also extremely elegant. Somehow, he has this ability to take extremely complex data and reduce it to a few key factors. What Don does is like taking a very complicated story and translating it into a beautiful haiku."

Raised in the Washington, DC, suburbs as the son of a project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, DeAngelis chose plasma physics over quantum theory at MIT after surviving what he calls his toughest course: fourth-year classical mechanics. "I struggled pretty hard," he says, "but by the end of the semester, I realized I wanted to do classical physics as a career."

After earning a PhD in engineering and applied physics at Yale, however, DeAngelis discovered that there "weren't any jobs" in his specialty. So he applied for--and won--a presidential internship in environmental science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. To his surprise, he discovered that he liked ecology even better than physics. For most of the next 22 years, he worked as a staff ecologist at Oak Ridge, where he began to develop the habitat models that he makes for the USGS today. During the late 1980s, while still at Oak Ridge, DeAngelis and colleagues started developing a series of Everglades models for Everglades National Park. The National Biological Service (now part of the USGS) recognized the importance of the modeling for its own continuing assessment of the wetlands and recruited him to Florida in 1994.

DeAngelis, who teaches ecology and conducts related research at the University of Miami, also serves as editor of the American Naturalist. Though he has an active family life (his wife of 12 years, Lie Lo, is a south Florida real-estate agent with four grown sons), he often puts in 12-hour days. "Working in Everglades restoration is an enormously complicated and time-consuming job," he says.

Still, he's convinced that it's worth the effort. "The Everglades are still threatened by runaway development, and they face real danger if we don't make the correct choices up ahead," he says. "I've spent a lot of years working on these habitat models, because I think the stakes are very high. We absolutely have to get this right."