1 / 11

Great South Bay Restoration Tools

School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY. Great South Bay Restoration Tools. Principal Investigators : R. Cerrato, J. Collier, C. Flagg, M. Frisk, C. Gobler, D. Lonsdale, G. Lopez, S. Munch, B. Peterson, R. Wilson

mcnerney
Download Presentation

Great South Bay Restoration Tools

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Great South Bay Restoration Tools Principal Investigators: R. Cerrato, J. Collier, C. Flagg, M. Frisk, C. Gobler, D. Lonsdale, G. Lopez, S. Munch, B. Peterson, R. Wilson Graduate Students: J. Carroll, D. Duvall, C. Harrington, M. McNamara, M. Nuttall, X. Jiang, J. Pan, M. Sugeno C. Wall

  2. Recent changes in Great South Bay Winter flounder 0.14 0.12 0.1 Suffolk County Population (US census) 0.08 Abundance 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 1938 1983 2007 Value of commercial landings 700 Hard Clams 600 500 Thousands of Bushels 400 300 200 100 0 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 350 Eelgrass 300 250 200 grams per square meter 150 100 50 0 1984 Today

  3. Many Possible Causes for Declines • Overharvesting • Harvesting of sublegal sizes • Habitat change/loss • Changes in inlet configuration (shoaling/dredging) • Decline in water quality • Natural cycles • Brown tide • Climate change • Disease/parasites • Reproductive failure • Predation (ctenophores, crabs, whelks) • Diversion of freshwater by treatment plant • Shift in plankton structure • Loss of feedback effects • Nutrient cycle changes • Removal from closed areas • Groundwater changes • Pollution

  4. Policy options for restoring GSB • Reduce nutrient input • require all south shore homes to be on sewers • regulate boat discharge • regulation of TMDL (total max daily loading) • Add clams to the system, create spawner sanctuaries • Eliminate / restrict recreational landings of fish / shellfish • Reduce shoreline hardening / increase saltmarsh area • Plant seagrass • Remove invasive species • Promote harvest of blue crabs / whelks

  5. Too many plausible options…. Which policy options are most likely to succeed? Which of these will be the most cost effective? e.g. Seeding of clams v. Harvest of predators What would be the most efficient implementation? e.g. Where should clams be deposited? How many do we need?

  6. Project Goal • Provide managers and policy makers a tool for evaluating the likely success of various management strategies. Tasks • construct a model of GSB which represents all of the major components of the ecosystem.

  7. Roadmap • Compile all existing data on GSB • Conduct experiments to fill in critical gaps in knowledge • Create software to model GSB ecosystem and user interface • Field studies to validate the model. Physical model (temperature, salinity, light, flow) Food web model (nutrients, plankton, seagrass, crabs, clams, fish) Management actions

  8. Westward Winds Physical model predicts salinity, temperature, and flow Salinity Flow

  9. Input Nutrients Food Web Model Components Phytoplankton Seagrass Zooplankton Sediment Deposit feeders Clams Crabs Sediment Predator-prey interaction Fish Indirect interaction

  10. Additional Benefits • Examine impact of “surprises” (e.g., disease outbreak, storm created breach) • Forecast impact of future development

  11. Summary • There are many possible policy options for restoring GSB • Currently develop a tool for evaluating potential for success of various restoration strategies • Model construction underway • Preliminary software expected this summer • Future work will include economic evaluation of costs

More Related