Pensacola Watershed

Pensacola Bay System Watershed

The Pensacola Bay System includes five interconnected estuaries: Escambia Bay, Pensacola Bay, Blackwater Bay, East Bay, and Santa Rosa Sound.  The watershed also includes three major river systems:  the Escambia, Blackwater, and Yellow rivers.  The system also includes numerous tributaries of these estuaries and rivers including the Shoal River and Titi Creek tributaries of the Yellow River.  The watershed covers nearly 7,000 square miles, about one-third of which are in Florida.  The watershed includes the majority of Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, northwestern Walton County, and a substantial area of southern Alabama.  The entire system discharges into the Gulf of Mexico, primarily through a narrow pass at the mouth of Pensacola Bay.

The Escambia River is a major alluvial river, which extends 240 miles northward from Escambia Bay to Bullock County, Alabama, as the Conecuh River.  Its drainage area covers over 4,200 square miles, about 90 percent of which are within Alabama’s borders.  The Yellow River extends 110 miles from the eastern shore of Blackwater Bay to a point northeast of Andalusia, Alabama.  Its drainage basin covers 1,365 square miles, with 64 percent within northwest Florida.  The Blackwater River drains approximately 860 square miles, of which 81 percent are in Florida’s Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties.  The river originates north of Bradley, Alabama, flows about 60 miles, and discharges into Blackwater Bay.  The estuarine component of the system covers approximately 144 square miles and extends approximately 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Pensacola Bay system supports an array of biological communities and species characteristic of a Gulf Coastal Plain riverine and estuarine system.  Estuarine habitats include benthic microalgae communities, seagrass beds, oyster beds, salt marshes, planktonic and pelagic communities, and unvegetated soft bottoms.  Freshwater habitats include alluvial and Blackwater rivers, bottomland hardwood forests, tupelo-cypress swamps, seepage swamps, and tidal fresh marshes.  Primary land uses include an increasing urbanized area, silviculture, and state-owned forest lands (see Pensacola Bay Watershed Land Use Map – 2004).

Additional information on this watershed is available inthe Pensacola Bay System SWIM Plan.