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NSF PR 98-39 - July 30, 1998
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New Long-Term Ecological Research Site Funded for
Plum Island Sound Ecosystems Study
Scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s
newest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site,
Plum Island Sound in Massachusetts, hope to discover
how productivity in estuaries -- places where rivers
meet the sea -- is affected by changes in land cover,
climate and sea level.
The Plum Island award, made by NSF's divisions of
environmental biology and ocean sciences, is for $3,780,000
over six years. Researchers aim to discover how these
factors have impacted three estuaries along the U.S.
East Coast: Plum Island; Wells, Maine; and North Inlet,
South Carolina.
Plum Island Sound is the most recent addition to a
network of 21 LTER sites supported by NSF. Of these
21 sites, 19 are scattered across North America, and
two sites are located in Antarctica.
Ecosystems at the land-sea interface, like Plum Island,
are among the most productive on earth because of
the material they receive from bordering terrestrial
and oceanic systems. "But human activities in rivers
and watersheds have enormously altered such estuarine
ecosystems through inputs of materials such as water,
sediments, nutrients, and organic matter," says Scott
Collins, director of NSF's LTER program. "An important
but neglected link between land and near-shore coastal
waters is the input of these materials. Research through
the Plum Island site should tell us a lot about how
food web dynamics in estuaries have been altered."
An estuary is a mosaic of habitats, including open
water, tidal creekbank marshes and marsh ponds, explains
scientist Chuck Hopkinson of the Marine Biological
Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, principal
investigator on the Plum Island LTER project. "Getting
a large-scale view of an estuary is important. On
a small scale, a section of estuary may appear healthy,
but a large-scale look may show that it is deteriorating."
Adds Philip Taylor, director of NSF's biological oceanography
program, "The Plum Island project addresses the question
of how ecosystems in a region respond to large-scale
disturbances, such as long-term sea level rise. In
this case, the region is the U.S. East Coast." Scientists
working on the project also hope to discover how the
biota of different biogeographic provinces are affected
by similar nutrient inputs, freshwater supply, and
availability of organic matter.
"Despite an awareness that large-scale, long-term
changes are happening in estuaries," explains Taylor,
"we don't fully understand the consequences of activities
like damming of rivers, land-use changes and removal
of floodplains."
Often, human influences on these systems result in
opposing effects. Clearing of land, for example, increases
sediment in a drainage basin, while damming decreases
sediment discharge. Climate variability and long-term
patterns of climate change can also have immense effects
on the timing, magnitude and nature of material inputs.
Infrequent storms can accomplish in days what would
normally occur over decades.
Through research at the Plum Island Sound LTER site,
scientists hope to soon have a better, broader view
of estuarine dynamics.
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