Miami Rock Ridge

The Miami Rock Ridge is a continuous limestone outcrop which formerly encompassed a large extent of far South Florida, including portions of the Everglades ecosystem. The traditional base of the elevation ranges from northern Miami-Dade County, Florida (the approximate latitude of North Miami Beach) southward to the upper Florida Keys, and it extends southwest into Everglades National Park.

The coastal ridge was traditionally a component of the endangered pine rocklands, which grew upon the length of the ridge.[1] The environmental community consisted of a large and continuous expanse of South Florida Slash Pines (Pinus elliottii var. densa), which was interspersed by tropical hardwood hammocks.[2] The globally imperiled pine rockland community, which also encompassed the Florida Keys and The Bahamas, supported numerous endemic plant species; 20 percent occur nowhere else in the world.[1] The communities of the Miami Rock Ridge are maintained by wildfires, including natural fires caused by lightning strikes; this affects the vegetation and its associated inhabitants, thus maintaining a diverse ecosystem.[3][4] The substrate—often consisting of marl—and climate also affects the height of vegetation; thus a mature subtropical hammock typically does not exceed 59 feet (18 m) on the Miami Rock Ridge.[5] Today the original communities have been largely removed by development, and the remaining pieces of the ecosystems are scattered into tiny fragments in extreme southeast Florida; they now encompass small fractions of their original range.[1] Simpson Park Hammock and Alice Wainwright Park contain small fragments of tropical hardwood hammock.