Project Title: Quantifying groundwater nutrient inputs and their impacts to Waquoit Bay estuaries
Duration: May-2024 to August-2024
Funding Source(s): Various educational programs at MBL, including the Logan Science Journalism Program, the NSFREU Biological Discovery in Woods Hole Program, the University of Chicago Metcalf Summer Internship Program, and the Brown-MBL LINK Internship Program.
Principal Investigator info: Lead investigator: Javier Lloret, Marine Biological Laboratory, Email: jlloret@mbl.edu
Onsite-contact: Kelsey Chenoweth, Marine Biological Laboratory, Email: kchenoweth@mbl.edu
Project Description: Lloret, together with several groups of students, interns, and faculty from several educational programs at the Marine Biological Laboratory, will be developing projects aimed at understanding the effects of excess nutrient loadings on ground- and estuarine water quality, and their impacts on the food webs of the various Waquoit Bay estuaries. They will define links between nitrogen loads from shifting land use and atmospheric deposition for the region, groundwater nitrogen concentrations, and water quality indicators in selected receiving estuaries. They will examine how excessive nitrogen loads alter the composition and structure of estuarine food webs. Waquoit Bay’s range in nitrogen loads will serve as a wider context within which to place data from other local estuaries.
