DCERP Estuarine Monitoring and Research Program

I. Routine Monitoring:

1. Habitat Mapping (Year one baseline):

1.1 Preliminary benthic and shoreline mapping (McNinch and Schaffner) – essential for development of Year two sampling program. The estuarine system will be mapped from the shoreline to the subtidal region using a combination of techniques and existing data, including LIDAR, aerial photography, satellite imagery, swath bathymetry and side scan sonar, and benthic cameras. This will allow us to quantify existing aquatic habitat types and efficiently allocate sampling effort to account for spatial variability within the estuary, relate ambient water-quality to site-specific characteristics and provide information needed for circulation and water-quality models.

1.2 Routine Water Quality Monitoring:
This should be accomplished using state-of-the-art technology and coupled to land use (CL GIS), base flow measurements (Piehler/Tobias)

    A. Vertical profiling (Luettich)

    B. DataFlow – high resolution mapping (Piehler/Paerl)

    C. Fixed station continuous monitoring (Piehler/Paerl)

1.1.3 Routine Benthic Monitoring (seasonal)

A. Sediment characterization, nutrients, organic content, grain size, benthic autotrophs (seasonal) (Anderson)

B. Estuarine and coastal mapping (McNinch)- only in specific study sites- annually.

C. Macrofaunal and meiofaunal metrics (Schaffner)

D. Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity (Schaffner)

1.1.4 Source Tracking (seasonal)

A. 15N mapping of N sources (Tobias/Anderson/Schaffner) – macroalgae, macrofauna, nitrate, POM – These data will allow us to identify the sources of nitrogen supporting production of water column and benthic autotrophs, as well as benthic macrofauna.

B. Carbon sources – CDOM sensor on DataFlow (Brush)

C. Fecal coliforms; viruses (Nobel)

1.1.5 Pigment characterization (Paerl)

 

II. Integrative Ecosystem-based Monitoring and Research Program

1. Coupled seasonal measurements of optical field (Currin), water column and sediment metabolism (Anderson/Piehler), sediment denitrification (Piehler), sediment/water nutrient fluxes (Anderson), macrofaunal and meiofaunal secondary production (Schaffner)

A. Local and regional land use will determine nutrient and sediment loads to the New River Estuary and, thus, will affect water clarity and light available to support production in the water column and benthos.  We will relate land use and nutrient loads to optical field, water column and benthic metabolism, nutrient fluxes, and community composition, which will be further coupled to support of food web structure and secondary production.

B. Benthic invertebrates will be used to assess spatial and temporal changes in habitat quality, food web structure and secondary production. Selected species will be analyzed for stable isotopes in order to determine the relative importance of various sources for primary and secondary production in support of higher trophic levels and relative nursery value of specific benthic habitat types.

2. Resuspension dynamics – Gust flume (McNinch) – effects on optical field, water quality, and benthic disturbance regimes from sediment resuspension and input from the watershed.

3. Watershed modeling (Brush) – A range of models will be developed from relatively simple, aggregated approaches to high resolution distributed models to predict nutrient and sediment loading under a variety of landuse trajectories and watershed activities, with the purpose of identifying the most readily-transferable, management-relevant model to be used as part of a decision support system on the base and in the adjacent communities.  Models will be validated against base flow measurements.

4. Stressor-specific indicators of disturbance (Schaffner/Peterson)
(coupled to integrative ecosystem-based monitoring)

Manipulative field experiment will be used to assess the effects of multiple stressors and their interactions on benthic invertebrate community structure. We hypothesize that differential responses of major taxa of macro- and meiobenthic invertebrates to specific stressors in the NRE will allow for relatively rapid, robust and ecologically meaningful identification of local (e.g. sediment contaminants, sediment organic enrichment) versus regional impairments in water quality (e.g. low dissolved oxygen).

5. Estuarine ecosystem modeling (Brush) – A mechanistic model of the NRE will be developed to simulate the response of the system to changes in anthropogenic nutrient and sediment loading (e.g. algal blooms, hypoxia), and to track nitrogen through the primary producers to benthic invertebrates and ultimately as a source for fish and shellfish.  The model will be driven by the watershed (Brush) and hydrodynamic (Luettich) models and validated against both routine (e.g. Dataflow, fixed sensors, profilers, isotopes, pigments, benthos) and ecosystem-based (e.g. metabolism, denitrification, nutrient fluxes, secondary production) monitoring data.  Results from optics and resuspension studies will be used to develop specific model formulations.