Shinnecock Bay Restoration Project (ShiRP)
Lab personnel: Flynn DeLany
National Park Service National Estuary Monitoring
Water Quality and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation in our National Estuaries
Nutrient enrichment of the coastal zone is a worldwide consequence of human population growth. Land clearing, fertilizer production and application, discharge of sewage and septic systems, and fossil fuel combustion have accelerated nitrogen and phosphorus loading to coastal ecosystems since the 1950’s. Estuaries in the northeastern U.S. are particularly threatened by human disturbances within the densely populated coastal zone. Diverse threats to estuaries protected by the National Park Service (NPS) exist, including natural disturbances (e.g. storms, sea-level rise), direct impacts of human activities (e.g. fishing, boating, dock construction), indirect effects of watershed development, and disasters (e.g. oil and toxic spills.) We participate in monitoring for two estuaries here on Long Island. Every year we alternate between water quality and seagrass monitoring in Fire Island National Seashore (https://www.nps.gov/fiis/index.htm) and Gateway National Recreation Area (https://www.nps.gov/gate/index.htm). The goals of estuarine monitoring within coastal parks of the NPS Northeast Region are:
- To determine whether nutrient loads to park estuaries are increasing over time, and
- To assess how estuarine natural resources are affected by changing nutrient inputs.
Lab personnel: Stephen Heck, Brittney Scannell
Georgica Pond Sampling
Examining species diversity and abundance in a degraded coastal lagoon
Georgica Pond is a coastal lagoon located in East Hampton, New York. Georgica Pond is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a sand beach, that is approximately 100 meters wide, for most of the year. Since the pond is separated from the ocean by a relatively small span of beach, wave action from storms can naturally break through this small section of sand on the south side of the pond, creating an ephemeral inlet between the ocean and Georgica Pond. The pond also has a long history of being mechanically opened to the ocean twice per year in the same general to reduce the concentration of nutrients in the pond that fuel algal blooms and maintain a degree of connectivity with the ocean. In recent years efforts to control the excessive amount of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) that is typically present in Georgica Pond during the warm season were undertaken involving mechanically harvesting and removing pond weed during the summer months. Our work aims to explore the species diversity and relative abundance of fish, crustaceans, and submerged aquatic vegetation throughout Georgica Pond in response to a degraded system.
Lab personnel: Stephen Heck, Brittney Scannell