IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0053832.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A GIS Analysis of the Relationship between Sinkholes, Dry-Well Complaints and Groundwater Pumping for Frost-Freeze Protection of Winter Strawberry Production in Florida

Author

Listed:
  • Mark D Aurit
  • Robert O Peterson
  • Justine I Blanford

Abstract

Florida is riddled with sinkholes due to its karst topography. Sometimes these sinkholes can cause extensive damage to infrastructure and homes. It has been suggested that agricultural practices, such as sprinkler irrigation methods used to protect crops, can increase the development of sinkholes, particularly when temperatures drop below freezing, causing groundwater levels to drop quickly during groundwater pumping. In the strawberry growing region, Dover/Plant City, Florida, the effects have caused water shortages resulting in dry- wells and ground subsidence through the development of sinkholes that can be costly to maintain and repair. In this study, we look at how frost-freeze events have affected West Central Florida over the past 25 years with detailed comparisons made between two cold-years (with severe frost-freeze events) and a warm year (no frost-freeze events). We analyzed the spatial and temporal correlation between strawberry farming freeze protection practices and the development of sinkholes/dry well complaints, and assessed the economic impact of such events from a water management perspective by evaluating the cost of repairing and drilling new wells and how these compared with using alternative crop-protection methods. We found that the spatial distribution of sinkholes was non-random during both frost-freeze events. A strong correlation between sinkhole occurrence and water extraction and minimum temperatures was found. Furthermore as temperatures fall below 41°F and water levels decrease by more than 20 ft, the number of sinkholes increase greatly (N >10). At this time alternative protection methods such as freeze-cloth are cost prohibitive in comparison to repairing dry wells. In conclusion, the findings from this study are applicable in other agricultural areas and can be used to develop comprehensive water management plans in areas where the abstraction of large quantities of water occur.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark D Aurit & Robert O Peterson & Justine I Blanford, 2013. "A GIS Analysis of the Relationship between Sinkholes, Dry-Well Complaints and Groundwater Pumping for Frost-Freeze Protection of Winter Strawberry Production in Florida," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0053832
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0053832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0053832
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0053832&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0053832?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Knox, J. W. & Weatherhead, E. K. & Bradley, R. I., 1997. "Mapping the total volumetric irrigation water requirements in England and Wales," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Manfred M. Fischer & Arthur Getis (ed.), 2010. "Handbook of Applied Spatial Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-03647-7, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Biswajeet Pradhan & Mohammed Abokharima & Mustafa Jebur & Mahyat Tehrany, 2014. "Land subsidence susceptibility mapping at Kinta Valley (Malaysia) using the evidential belief function model in GIS," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 73(2), pages 1019-1042, September.
    2. Jae-hyuck Lee & HaeOk Choi, 2020. "An Analysis of Public Complaints to Evaluate Ecosystem Services," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-11, February.
    3. Lone, Junaid Mushtaq & Agehara, Shinsuke & Abd-Elrahman, Amr, 2024. "Intermittent sprinkler irrigation during the establishment of strawberry (Fragaria ×ananassa Duch.) bare-root transplants conserves water without loss of yield and fruit quality," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chocholatá Michaela & Furková Andrea, 2017. "Regional Disparities in Education Attainment Level in the European Union: A Spatial Approach," TalTech Journal of European Studies, Sciendo, vol. 7(2), pages 107-131, October.
    2. Rey, Sergio, 2015. "Bells in Space: The Spatial Dynamics of US Interpersonal and Interregional Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 69482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Padovano, Fabio & Petrarca, Ilaria, 2014. "Are the responsibility and yardstick competition hypotheses mutually consistent?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 459-477.
    4. Atems, Bebonchu, 2013. "The spatial dynamics of growth and inequality: Evidence using U.S. county-level data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 19-22.
    5. Manfred M. Fischer & Nico Pintar & Benedikt Sargant, 2016. "Austrian Outbound Foreign Direct Investment in Europe:A spatial econometric study," Romanian Journal of Regional Science, Romanian Regional Science Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-22, JUNE.
    6. Mohl, Philipp & Hagen, Tobias, 2011. "Do EU structural funds promote regional employment? Evidence from dynamic panel data models," Working Paper Series 1403, European Central Bank.
    7. Daniel A. Griffith & Manfred M. Fischer, 2016. "Constrained Variants of the Gravity Model and Spatial Dependence: Model Specification and Estimation Issues," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Roberto Patuelli & Giuseppe Arbia (ed.), Spatial Econometric Interaction Modelling, chapter 0, pages 37-66, Springer.
    8. Wong, Linda & van Kooten, G. Cornelis & Clarke, Judith A., 2012. "The Impact of Agriculture on Waterfowl Abundance: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 37(2), pages 1-14, August.
    9. Alexandra SCHAFFAR, 2012. "La Loi De Zipf Sous Le Prisme De L’Auto-Correlation Spatiale - Les Cas De La Chine Et De L’Inde," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 36, pages 189-204.
    10. Karen Miranda & Oscar Martínez Ibáñez & Miguel Manjón Antolín, 2015. "Estimating Individual Effects and their Spatial Spillovers in Linear Panel Data Models," Post-Print hal-01430809, HAL.
    11. Tsung Huang & Tsun-Feng Chiang & Jiun-Nan Pan, 2015. "Fertility and Crime: Evidence from Spatial Analysis of Taiwan," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 319-327, September.
    12. Salvatore Dell’Erba & Emanuele Baldacci & Tigran Poghosyan, 2013. "Spatial spillovers in emerging market spreads," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 735-756, October.
    13. Marko Ogorevc & Sonja Slander, 2011. "Shareholders and wage determination - bringing in "space"," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1279, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Xin Wu & Peng Cui, 2016. "A Study of the Time–Space Evolution Characteristics of Urban–Rural Integration Development in a Mountainous Area Based on ESDA-GIS: The Case of the Qinling-Daba Mountains in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-17, October.
    15. Rene Westerholt & Enrico Steiger & Bernd Resch & Alexander Zipf, 2016. "Abundant Topological Outliers in Social Media Data and Their Effect on Spatial Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(9), pages 1-31, September.
    16. Liubov Antosik & Natalya Ivashina, 2019. "Modeling of spatial dependence in the migration flows of graduates of the higher education institutions of the Russian Federation," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 54, pages 70-89.
    17. Kaixing Huang, 2015. "The Economic Impacts of Global Warming on Agriculture: the Role of Adaptation," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2015-20, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    18. Ying Ni & Jiaqi Chen, 2020. "Exploring the Effects of the Built Environment on Two Transfer Modes for Metros: Dockless Bike Sharing and Taxis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-20, March.
    19. Zhonglei Yu & Lei Liu & Hua Zhang & Jinshe Liang, 2017. "Exploring the Factors Driving Seasonal Farmland Abandonment: A Case Study at the Regional Level in Hunan Province, Central China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-18, January.
    20. Carla Shoff & Tse-Chuan Yang, 2012. "Spatially varying predictors of teenage birth rates among counties in the United States," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(14), pages 377-418.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0053832. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.