	Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge
University of Florida	Aquatic, Wetland and Invasive Plant Information Retrieval System

An Autumn Visit to the Cape

by Vic Ramey

Ever since 1957, when I was a fifth grader living in Cocoa Beach, I have been keenly interested in the other-worldly work taking place at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Most of my classmates at the time were children of men and women who worked "at the Cape", so our school principal knew when to conduct fire drills coincidental with "secret" launches of unmanned test rockets. These rockets had names like Vanguard, Thor and Atlas, and one day (only a few years later) something like them would send men to the moon. Cocoa Beach in the 50s was a place where spectacularly beautiful successes and tremendously explosive failures determined the moods of children the next day--their parents were the ones at the switches during those early rocket experiments. Some of these missiles, I vividly remember, roared straight and true, arcing over our heads, disappearing into the blue; some veered off, wobbling, and were blown to bits right in front of our eyes. Either way, truely awesome in the eyes of 300 elementary school children.

And now, in October, 2000, the people at the Cape have sent manned Space Shuttles into outer space 100 times!

Cape Canaveral is not only America's entrance to space, it is also 140,000 acres (220 square miles) of uplands and fresh, brackish and salt marshes: the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. A lot of water management goes on at the Cape. The more active and industrial parts of the Cape are crossed with canals, without which the ground underneath the enormously heavy rocket pads would become saturated and weak. Without the canals, goodbye Space Shuttle.

Parts of the Cape remain in pristine natural condition. However, parts have been divided by dikes into large tracts and mosquito-control impoundments by the space people, and by the farmers and ranchers who preceeded them. Some of the impoundments are thousands of acres in size. On the west side of the Cape lies the brackish inland water way of east central Florida: the Indian River and the Banana River (they are not really rivers; they are long tidal lagoons). On the other side of the dikes are the impoundments of fresher water.

Some Unique Scenes

Space Shuttle Launch Pad
Scenics of Cape Canaveral
VAB - Vehicle Assembly Building

I was delighted to be permitted entry to the Cape and, through the skin of my teeth, passed the security check. I was accompanying Colette Jacono who was helping her colleagues in the Estuarine and Marine Sciences branch, Florida Caribbean Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, by identifying plants in impounded marshes under research study.

An underlying assumption by many is that restoration of salt marsh habitat by tearing down dikes, would be beneficial to estuarine fish populations. However researchers and managers first need to understand if the shallow flats, vegetated shoreline and adjacent deepwater created in impounded marshes might actually be contributing to nursery habitat, including that of prime recreational species, such as spotted seatrout.

During two long days, Colette and I drove the dikes (there are 200 miles of dikes) and backtrails of Cape Canaveral, stopping and getting out of the big SUV probably 300 times, in order to document the plants growing along and in these marshes.

At each stop she would walk around and look at all the plants on the dike and in the surrounding marshes and canals. Observations were followed by note-taking, then off to work with selective cutting and pressing of plant samples for specimen preparation. Plant cuttings were numbered and then pressed between newspaper and cardboard in a wooden press that would later sit for a few days in a drying oven. (The "plant press" hasn't changed much since Mark Catesby first botanically explored the state in 1722.)

The tricky part of the trip was reading the satellite photos to decide when to turn left on the narrow dikes and when to turn right. Wide swaths of 4-foot high guinea grass made navigating rough. Once, lost in a maze of unmarked paths and guinea grass, she sought the help of the friendly Kennedy Space Center police. (We may have been lost, but the overhead security helicopter knew exactly where we were...)

The Vehicle Assembly Building (the VAB) is where the space shuttle is assembled (and also where the moon rockets and moon ships were assembled). At more than 500 feet tall, 700 feet long and 500 feet wide, the VAB is one of the largest buildings in the world: about 3.75 times the volume of the Empire State Building. I knew beforehand that the VAB would be a looming presence during our October visit to the Cape, and even after two days in its shadow I remained astonished.

The dreamy incongruity of it all is what I'll remember most: under leaden, very rainy skies; manatee, alligator and Space Shuttle in the same view; Japanese television crew; distant turbines, echoing announcements, and other weird sounds of a rocket launch facility at work; egret at one end of the Space Shuttle runway, wild hog at the other; botanist carefully cutting and pressing plants...

Botanizing at Cape Canaveral
and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

PLANT INVASIONS on Cape Canaveral

Brazilian pepper, Schinus terebinthifolius, able to thrive and spread in dry sand and in wet mud, might be considered the #1 invasive plant in Florida. These trees are spread by seed, believed to be carried by birds. Brazilian pepper can easily be recognized from a speeding car, along side most of the roads in central and southern Florida. Nothing except perhaps temperature is checking its spread northward; the plant is as far north as Flagler Beach on the Atlantic side of Florida (about 50 miles south of the Georgia border).

On the Cape, we found Brazilian pepper everywhere. We also met Greg Redding, a FWS--Merritt Island Refuge employee, who was doing his best to contain the spread of this fast-growing tree. He and Miley Watson have sprayed and hacked thousands of trees in an effort to keep the Refuge's 200 miles of dikes passable.

According to Ralph Lloyd, Deputy Refuge Manager, the Refuge's 140,000 acres are in real peril: "I hate to think of the money and manpower it would take to get control of Brazilian pepper on the Cape. It would be millions and millions of dollars." Lloyd says that management of pepper, cogon grass and guinea grass are one of his top priorities, futile as it seems.

Brazilian pepper, non-native invader

Brazilian pepper management

Guinea grass, Panicum maximum, another non-native invader, grows up to 8 feet tall on the 200 miles of dikes in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.