Imagine that you are lifted high up into space and supported there for a time. When you look down on North Florida, you discover that you’ve been gifted with a beautiful magic. In vivid color like the best hand-drawn animation in an old Disney movie, you can see forests and cities, small towns and farms. You can even see below the surface of the earth where great underground rivers and smaller conduits in limestone bubble up into springs like the Ichetucknee. 

You watch as rainwater enters the ground in one place, then rises in springs many miles away. You witness that same underground water being drawn up by humans into thousands of wells. You look on in awe as this dynamic system rises and falls, the beating heart beneath the Springs Heartland of Planet Earth—the greatest concentration of freshwater springs on our globe.

You are seeing into the Floridan aquifer, one of the largest and most productive aquifers in the world that is the source of the Ichetucknee as well as the source of drinking water for millions of Floridians. Through our dependence on the aquifer for this water, we are connected not only to the springs but also to each other in a vast wet net where springs sparkle like earthbound stars.

In this section, we invite you to take a closer look at the many features of this wondrous, life-giving hydrogeological system, including:

• Geology and hydrology
• Ecosystems, habitats, flora and fauna
• The Ichetucknee Trace