Fred Sklar Ph.D

Dr. Fred H. Sklar Ph.D. is the Everglades Ecosystems Assessment Section Director at the South Florida Water Management District.  He holds a master's in Oceanography and a Ph.D. in Wetland Ecology.  He has been studying, evaluating, and managing coastal and freshwater ecosystems of the United States since 1976.  

As part of Dr. Sklar’s research on the federally endangered Snail Kite, the Willoughby Expedition will document the presence/absence, abundance, and location of Florida apple snail eggs (which are usually attached to aquatic emergent plants such as sawgrass).  The Florida apple snail, a freshwater mollusk that occurs in Central and South Florida wetlands, including the Everglades, is the sole food source of the Snail Kite.  As the Everglades has been alternately drained, flooded, and had its water quality degraded by human impact, much of the apple snail’s habitat has been destroyed, which has left the Snail Kite endangered.  The abundance and location of Florida apple snails directly impact the survival of the Snail Kite as a species.  The Willoughby Expedition will be able to reach remote interior portions of the Everglades that researchers cannot typically access and collect apple snail egg data that is vital to Dr. Sklar’s Snail Kite research.  

Dr. Sklar serves as an Associate Editor for the Ecological Society of America’s journal: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment; an executive member of the steering committee for the Florida Coastal Ecosystem LTER Program, and a RECOVER Executive Committee member for the Restoration of the Everglades.  He has published over 100 articles on the hydrology, soil, plant, and animal processes associated with the degradation and restoration of wetlands and coastal ecosystems. Dr. Sklar became nationally recognized for his post-doctoral studies in Louisiana, where he was the first person to ever integrate super-computer numeric and graphic processing to simulate wetland evolution and succession due to sea level rise.