TAMPA AND SARASOTA BAYS: WATERSHEDS AND TRIBUTARIES 
Michael S. Flannery 
Southwest Florida Water Management District 
Brooksville, Florida 
INTRODUCTION 
Unlike many estuaries in the United States, neither Tampa nor 
Sarasota Bay is associated with a large river. All tributaries flowing 
to these bays originate on the Florida peninsula and, consequently, are 
relatively small (Figure 1). For instance, the largest river flowing to 
Tampa Bay, the Hillsborough, is only 55 miles long. Despite their 
limited size, tributaries to Tampa Bay are important influences on that 
bay’s physico-chemical characteristics. For Sarasota Bay, where 
tributaries are more reduced, these relationships are less pronounced. 
For both bays, however, freshwater tributaries and their associated 
brackish zones are important to estuarine structure and perform 
ecological functions integral to bay productivity. Accordingly, resource 
managers and public officials in the region have clearly stated that the 
proper management of these tributaries is essential for developing bay 
management plans. 
In this paper, the status of tributaries to Tampa and Sarasota 
Bays is reviewed. Emphasis is placed on water quality and seasonal 
quantities of flow and how these characteristics are related to land use 
and other human impacts in the watersheds. A brief synopsis of regional 
meteorological conditions affecting runoff is also presented. Certain 
information presented in this chapter was synthesized from other reviews 
concerning Tampa Bay, particularly those by Lewis and Estevez (1988) and 
Drew, Schomer, and Wolfe (in review). For the sake of brevity, 
references are not extensively used here and uncited information is 
either original or contained in one of the above reviews. Many data 
presented here are only estimates, which the reader should consider for 
future use. 
METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS 
The delivery of fresh water to Tampa and Sarasota bays from their 
respective watersheds is a product of the meteorological conditions in 
west-central Florida. The distribution of rainfall is the most important 
variable, but the seasonal variation of other factors such as solar 
insolation, temperature, and evapotranspiration also affect runoff to the 
bays. 
West-central Florida experiences a subtropical climate with mild 
winters and long humid summers. The mean annual temperature for the 
Tampa Bay area is 22.3°C (Wooten 1985) with slightly warmer conditions 
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