Regional drainage improvements reduced the lake's surface area and lowered the depth. In the early and mid-1900s, construction changes in the Kissimmee basin removed significant regional storage upstream of Lake Okeechobee. The Immokalee Ridge to the west and the coastal ridges to the east generally mark the hydrologic boundaries of the historic Everglades, although numerous connections through the coastal ridge overflowed from the Everglades to the Atlantic Ocean. This immense wetland system spread from the south shore of Lake Okeechobee to the mangrove estuaries of Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to major drainage activities in south Florida that began in the late 1800s, the Everglades (south of Lake Okeechobee) consisted of approximately 4 million acres of subtropical wetlands and slow sheetflow that covered much of south Florida. Rather, the use of recent climatic data (e.g., rainfall, potential evapotranspiration, tidal and inflow boundaries) allows for meaningful comparisons between the current managed system and the natural system under identical climatic conditions. The NSM and NSRSM do not attempt to simulate the pre-drained hydrology the data necessary to perform such a simulation are not available. The Natural System Model (NSM) and Natural System Regional Simulation Model (NSRSM) simulate the hydrologic response of a pre-drained Everglades system.
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