Evaluating the Impact of Hydrologic Alterations on Salt Marsh Sustainability in a Changing Climate
Project Title: Evaluating the Impact of Hydrologic Alterations on Salt Marsh Sustainability in a Changing Climate
Project Partners: Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project, Louisiana State University, National Park Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, United States Geologic Survey, Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Coastal managers are faced with the challenge of managing marsh hydrology in a way that meets human health needs, optimizes ecosystem services, and supports sustainability. In New England this includes accounting for the effects of ditches that were dug decades ago in 90% of the region’s salt marshes.
Ditches increase marsh drainage and reduce the spatial extent of shallow pools that may represent physical loss of buried soil carbon. However, efficient drainage may reduce the long-term sustainability of marshes by altering below ground biogeochemical and physical processes in a way that results in subsidence and lowered marsh elevation. Managers, restoration practitioners, and scientists at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project have expressed a need to understand the tradeoffs of hydrologic management strategies (i.e., ditch remediation, density, maintenance) and identify actions that will achieve user-specified outcomes— such as drainage, maintaining elevation, and carbon burial.
This project is a collaboration between scientists and end users to develop decision-support tools for marsh hydrological management strategies that promote sustainability and delivery of valuable ecosystem services under future sea level scenarios.
Products:
FACT SHEET: Project Overview
WHOI Website: Marsh Sustainability & Hydrology
Marshes, Mosquitos & Sea Level Rise-Oceanus Magazine Video Link
Sediment dynamics and hydrographic conditions during storm passage, Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts
Project Title: Sediment dynamics and hydrographic conditions during storm passage, Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts
Date: 2016
Principal Investigator(s): Maio, C.V., Donnelly, J.P., Sullivan, R., Madsen, S.M., Weidman, C.R., Gontz, A.M., & Sheremet, V.A.
Affiliations:
Summary: Marine Geology, 381, 67-86. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025322716301438
Monitoring wind waves in Nantucket Sound off South Cape Beach
Project Title: Monitoring wind waves in Nantucket Sound off South Cape Beach
Date: 2016
Principals: Maxim Sheremet (Sturgis Charter Public School), Chris Weidman (retired, WBNERR)
Presentation/Poster: Natural History Conference 2016 South Cape Beach Wave Exp_Poster_NaturalHistoryConference_2016
Remotely Determining Tidal Currents and Volumetric Discharge
Erika D. Johnson
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Funding Source(s): Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Land–sea coupling and global-driven forcing: following some of Scott Nixon’s challenges
Project Title: Land–sea coupling and global-driven forcing: following some of Scott Nixon’s challenges
Date: 2015
Principal Investigator(s): Valiela, I. & Bartholomew, M.
Summary: Adjoined watershed–estuary–coastal ecosystems are coupled by biogeochemical and hydrodynamic processes, as Scott Nixon repeatedly argued in his many contributions. Case histories from Waquoit Bay and the Pacific Coast of Panama, supplemented by information from other sites, make evident that the couplings that enable connectivity among spatially separate landscape units, while highly subject to detailed local contingencies, take place in every coastal zone, can be powerfully affected by human activities on land, and by global-scale forcings, as Scott Nixon often reminded us. Read full text…Estuaries and Coasts 38: 1189. doi:10.1007/s12237-01498083. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12237-014-9808-3
In-situ ecosystem metabolism measured by eddy correlation
PI: Matthew Long, WHOI
Funding: WHOI
Estuarine Hydrodynamics – the velocity field, tides, seiching, and storm-generated currents
Project Title: Estuarine Hydrodynamics – the velocity field, tides, seiching, and storm-generated currents
Date: 2013
Principal Investigators: Vitalii Sheremet, University of RI, NOAA NMFS Research Fellow, Chris Weidman, WBNERR
Funding: NOAA NMFS Research Fellowship, WBNERR collaborative in-kind
Development of Low-cost, In-situ, Precision Hydrodynamic Instrumentation for Measurement of Tides, Currents and Waves
Project Title: Development of Low-cost, In-situ, Precision Hydrodynamic Instrumentation for Measurement of Tides, Currents and Waves
PI: Vitalii Sheremet, University of RI, NOAA NMFS Research Fellow
Funding: NOAA NMFS Research Fellowship, WBNERR collaborative in-kind
Summary: An inexpensive current meter based on the drag principle is being designed and developed. It provides a simple, elegant, robust, and low-cost solution for measuring currents at the ocean bottom or from any fixed platform. Its operation is based on the drag law of a buoyant tethered cylinder in flowing water. Three-axis accelerometers measure tilts which are converted to a horizontal velocity vector. Special tethered attachment enables estimation of not only the magnitude but also horizontal direction of the current. The same accelerometers are also used to construct a simple stick-and-float tide gauge.
The performance of the instruments is being evaluated in field tests in Waquoit Bay and Nantucket Sound. Arrays of the instruments deployed for periods from days to months are used to record tidal and higher frequency oscillations in the Waquoit Bay. A dramatic double peaked flood (double height) tide arising from nonlinear interaction with bathymetry is studied. Strong seiches with periods of about 15-30 minutes are also recorded in some parts of the Waquoit Bay system.
