Wetlands Exam 2

Everglades Restration - StormWater Treatment Areas

STAs are constructed wetlands that remove and store nutrients through plant growth and the accumulation of dead plant material in a layer of peat.

Oyster Restoration - Salinity

Salinity is terribly important to oyster life history - both because of physiological tolerances and because of the relationship between disease, predation and salinity. The Eastern Oyster is somewhat odd among oysters in that it NEEDS intermediate salinities, and perhaps has used this to escape predation and disease. Eastern Oysters can tolerate pure ocean strength and up to 40ppt. At the high end they face predation and disease; at the low end they face physiological limitations. They can tolerate swings handily but only for limited periods of time. Their highest growth and reproduction is at intermediate (15 - 25 ppt) salinities.

Wetland Hydrology - Examples

Salt Marsh - Tidal flow Floodplain Forest - Riverine flow, seasonal inundation Cypress Dome - No flow (isolated), hydrology from rainfall

Salt Marsh Mosquitos

Salt marsh mosquitos = - Huge infestations can follow rain after dry spells - Adults can migrate up to 40 miles - Estimated 420,000 acres of salt marsh in Florida

Seagrasses may be Ephemeral

Seagrasses may be Ephemeral - plan for "wandering" Up to 2X the area needed compared with any snapshot

1. Oyster reef management is often plagued by negative feedback loops, often caused by humans. Describe one of these feedback loops in detail. What intervention could we enact that might break or reverse the feedback loop?

Several possible answers. Example: Oyster reefs are gradually degraded by overfishing and loss of elevation due to negative shell budget. This puts oysters in the anoxic zone in some water bodies (Chesapeake) or in high predation or parasitism zones (Big Bend, salt marshes of the southeast). This can be reversed by building oyster reef beds up to the point that conditions are good for settlement and survival.

Chesapeake Bay - Restoring the Blue Crab Fishery

Since 2008 Virginia and Maryland have stopped winter dredging, and it's really working!!!

Eastern oysters are estuarine, requiring pulses of low salinity

Since oysters cannot move once settled, this means that the are very responsive to land based hydrology - it's the freshwater that drives their populations. Too much, and they die as witnessed in Louisiana when lots of fresh water was released in response to Deepwater Horizon spill and huge beds of oysters killed. At the other end (Apalachicola), too little flow means populations decline rapidly. So this is a bell shaped curve, really.

Seagrass Restoration - Site Evaluation

Site Evaluation - Did seagrasses ever occur here? - Can seagrasses come back naturally? - Can causal agent of loss be identified? - Evaluation of edaphic conditions * Current <0.5 m/s potential for turbidity - Evaluation of cost and risk - Overplanting ratio of 3:1

Oysters are surprisingly resilient

So this is generally depressing. However, oysters are surprisingly resilient, and recognizing their strengths can greatly aid restoration. If oysters turn over fast, they can also grow fast. One of the first decisions in determining whether and how to restore oyster populations is to know whether a larval supply exists. If it does, the problem becomes much simpler - it is one of substrate and water quality. In Chesapeake, there is so little larval supply that oysters must be seeded in from hatcheries. In much of the rest of the southeast it is a question of catching spat.

Catching Spat - Cultching or shelling

Some of the techniques. First, a class of techniques that are used to essentially catch larvae by enhancing the substrate. Shell planting is the oldest form of restoration and aquaculture - and is highly effective. "Cultch".... As before the depths of beds and the importance of siting are crucial in determining success. Note that shell is light, and can be moved around. So not a good solution for creating a breakwater or for high energy situations. Shell is becoming a critical limiting resource, and we are now resorting to recycling shell from restaurants, using fossil shell deposits, and other materials.

17) Describe the temporal aspects of breeding biology of Scaphiopus, the "Hurricane" or Spadefoot Toad.

Spadefoots breed only following periods of exceptional rainfall, which may occur only once in ten or more years.

Water Regime Definition

Spatial and Temporal distribution of water depths

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 7. What remains to be done in this restoration effort?

Still have not achieved full species complement, and there are large mounds full of exotic species.

Chesapeake Bay Harvested Species - Food Web Connections

Striped Bass and American Shad share spawning habitat Oyster reefs provide habitat for blue crabs

Chesapeake Bay - Replanting Bay Grasses

Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) Eelgrass - Replanting doesn't always work - Bay grass is highly sensitive to light attenuation

Waterfowl Breeding Ecology

Survival of offspring is strongly affected by access to high density prey (80 - 90% of diet) Both females and young need very high densities of high protein prey - invertebrates Invertebrates are high in protein - Chironomid larvae (Midges) - Fairy shrimp - Fly larvae Amphipods - Oligochaetes - Snails - Beetle larvae The guy in the 1960s picture is handling millions of mayfly, that have hatched out in the Midwest.

Physical Hazards - Dehydration

Symptoms: - Lack of sweating - Light colored lips - Light headed - Making poor decisions - Headaches - Confusion Treatment: - Rehydrate with non-caffeinated liquids Prevention - drink water every 20 minutes - Contributes to hyperthermia

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Living Shorelines

The Living Shoreline concept is one that epitomizes the ecosystem services end of things. Living shorelines are generally used in high erosion situations, and often involve a range of materials. Here you see concrete reef balls, bagged cultch forming a dike or bar, and planted Spartina alterniflora. One of the ideas is that healthy living shorelines are self maintaining, and may even grow as time goes on. This is critical for addressing sea level rise.

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Lack of Larvae?

Use hatchery raised oyster "spat"

Runoff Source? (watershed)

The Watershed Watershed = The land area that drains to a specific point; defined by topography... - in FL, the groundwater basin must be considered part of he contributing drainage basin

6. Your agency assigns you the job of surveying breeding colonies of egrets, herons and storks in the St. Johns River marshes. You have airboats, outboards, go-devils, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft at your disposal. What technique would you use to estimate numbers of nesting birds, and how would you accomplish it? Look at the St. Johns river marshes on Google earth, and justify your use of equipment and personnel based on logistical, economic and safety considerations.

Use the helicopter. This allows you to quickly survey this largely inaccessible area, with reasonable safety margins. Most of the birds are visible from the air, and the helicopter can be flown at a variety of speeds and altitudes. Although the hourly cost is high, this is worth it because it can cover such large areas quickly. The only other alternative would be an airboat, which is also dangerous and would require huge person-hours to do the entire marsh system.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)

The end to aviation risk? Pros: - Safer alternative to manned aerial survey work Cons: - Currently commercial use is heavily restricted

Vector Control - Summary

Variety of methods employed to control disease vectors and pests: - Chemical control * Reapplication necessary for effective treatment - Biocontrol * Doesn't always work, but more species specific, fewer environmental side-effects - Habitat management * More permanent, but can be at odds with other management objectives OMWM can effectively alter the functional type of a wetland. For this reason and others, this is not a technique applicable to all locations or one that would be accepted in all locales.

Mosquito Life Cycle (Evolutionary Success)

The life cycle is one reason for their evolutionary success - Complete metamorphosis allows for specialization in each life stage - Each life stage has its own evolutionary path - Larvae are specialized for feeding and growing - Adults are specialized for mating and distributing eggs Has its own evolutionary path and is adapted to be really good at different things

Flooding Frequency

The number of separate flood events per year

Oyster Restoration - Boring Sponge

There are a number of parasites that erode the shell itself too - in the living oyster. Boring sponge is the most common of these, and it needs full immersion, and salty water to live. So this is another process by which oysters decline when in subtidal reefs.

Managing Hydrology - Objective - Detain Stormwater, Sequester nutrients from surface water

These come in all shapes and sizes - from urban parks to the Sweetwater Branch project, to huge Stormwater Treatment Areas in south Florida. Each come with their own set of management issues, long and short term.

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Oyster Castles

These oyster castles are made out of cinderblocks and are effective in creating new habitat. Note that in this case oysters are displacing mud flat habitat - a choice.... All hardened substrate if it is durable is capable of lasting through a series of oyster die-off cycles and still offering habitat - this is a new form of resilience introduced by humans.

Managing Hydrology - Species and Hydrology

These panels show in pictures the specielikes that are more favored by various hydroperiods, with the small, fast-breeding fishes and macroinverts crayfish being at the advantage soon after a drought, and larger fishes and reptiles being favored at longer hydroperiods.

Wetland Fire Ecology - Archbold Biological Station

This is a series of pictures from Archbold Biological station showing heavy overgrowth prior to a fire, immediately postfire, and then once per year following the fire. You can see that the trees remain, but the aboveground biomass gets burned off by the fire. This keeps the ecosystem in a pre-climax state. Takehome points: there are plants and entire communities adapted to fire, and those communities are dynamic because of fire. Ask yourself in any community, what happens if we take away the fire.

Primary producers and detritus form the basis of estuarine food webs

This is not an example of the Chesapeake food web, but is meant to convey an estuary in general...

Zoonotic Diseases

This person works with wildlife and may have been exposed to certain zoonotic diseases not routinely considered in the differential diagnoses of febrile illnesses. Ex: Rabies, Lyme Disease, West Nile Virus, Monkey Pox

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Bagged Oyster Shell

To reduce oyster shell settlement and dispersal, oyster shell is sometimes bagged - in most cases in small bags that individuals can carry. Again, a people-power kind of exercise in which lots of volunteers are utilized.

Chesapeake Bay - EPA issues Pollution Diet in 2010

Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Maximum amount of pollution a waterbody can receive and meet water quality standards

Sampling Vegetation - Spectral Bands

"Bands" are sections of wavelength from the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) where given "colors" or energy patterns exist (e.g., green band = ~525-605nm). - Generally only 4-40 bands within the visible to infrared wavelengths Multispectral imagery = wavelengths that are broken up into only a few bands (picture) Hyperspectral Imagery = wavelengths with many bands

Runoff

"Excess rainfall"

Wetland Hydrology

"Hydrology is probably the single most important determinant of the establishment and maintenance of specific types of wetlands and wetlands processes"

Managing Light Geese

"Light" geese are Lesser and Greater Snow Geese, plus Ross's Goose. They are increasing almost exponentially and are eating out the grass and forbs on both breeding sites and wintering sites - mostly salt marsh. Their increase stems in part from access to crops during the winter - spilled corn and grains, winter wheat.

Propulsion - Jet Drives

- 20 - 30% less efficient than a standard propeller - Only needs a few inches of water - Vegetation can clog intake

Seagrasses - Worldwide Distribution

- 22 million acres in Florida - 90% of US seagrass coverage in Gulf of Mexico

Vector Control - The Mosquito

- 41 genera - 3,500 species - Cosmopolitan - Wetlands = important breeding habitat The mosquito will be our model organism today for talking about how to disease vector reduction or pest reduction By Muhammad Mahdi Karim (www.micro2macro.net) Facebook Youtube - Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9556152

History of Nesting in the Everglades

- 85 - 95% decline since 1930s

Sampling Vegetation - Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)

- Active sensor - using shorter wavelengths (e.g. visible and near-infrared) - Determining elevation changes, shallow water bodies, and canopy height - Some forms can be used to penetrate water - Calculates the height of objects (vegetation) and density useful for calculating biomass - For the most part, open water looks all the same in LiDAR Applications: - Calculating accurate x, y, z - The primary platform is an airborne fixed-wing aircraft, although with the proliferation of UAS, in the near future, we will likely see an increase in LiDAR use on UAS.

Mosquitos - Pupae: tumblers

- Active, comma-shaped swimmers - No mouthparts for feeding - Pupal stage lasts 2-3 days - Can react to potential predators/changes in light Pupae have somewhat developed eyes that can perceive shadows, so if you were to wave your hand over them, they'd immediately swim to the bottom. This type of response is probably to avoid predators like predaceous diving beetles. picture (left to right) = Anopheles, Aedes, Culex

Mosquitos - Larval Adaptations for Getting Oxygen

- Air tube "snorkel" - Spiracles (respiratory pores) - Piercing organ to get O2 from plants (genus Mansonia) - Anopheles is the malaria genus picture (left to right) = Anopheles, Aedes, Culex

Mosquitos - Larvae: legless wrigglers

- All mosquitos are aquatic in larval and pupal stages - Most larvae feed on plankton - Some are predatory Found in stagnant or slow moving water

Sampling Vegetation - Emitted Energy

- All objects are emitting energy, but the Sun provides the most obvious energy source. Most of this energy is reflected back to the sensor. - Passive sensors simply receive the reflected/emitted sun energy from the object; whereas, active sensors target emitted energy at object and receive the reflection (e.g., radar).

Know Your Colleagues

- Allergies (carry Benadryl and if possible Epi-pens) - Health issues - Physical limits - Fatigue

Steps **

- Allow seagrass to expand to 2X area - Assume 70% of plantings will fail - Overplant by 3X - Monitor

Restoring the Chesapeake Bay

- Amazing ecosystem huge restoration effort - Largest estuary in the United States, sitting in a drowned river valley - Long, and narrow 200 miles long, 2 miles wide at widest point - Shallow - average depth is 21 ft, deepest point is 170ish ft deep - Surrounded by multiple states: Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware. - Huge restoration effort, perhaps second behind the Everglades Restoration Program - 100,000 streams, rivers, creeks feed into the bay!!!

Sampling Vegetation - Example of Reflectance

- An example of differences in reflectance of light across the visible to mid infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum using water, vegetation, and soil. - Note that water absorbs highly in the infrared regions in contrast with these other two land cover types, making it easy to detect it in that region. Conversely, vegetation really differentiates itself from soils and water in the near infrared (NIR) region and mid-infrared, thus making these good places to tease apart these land cover types.

Chesapeake Bay - Steady Decline in Atlantic Menhaden

- Atlantic menhaden are managed as a single unit from Maine to Florida - The Chesapeake Bay is one of the most important and largest nurseries of menhaden Atlantic menhaden are managed as a single unit from Maine to Florida. While there is no Chesapeake Bay-specific target for menhaden abundance

Modes of Wetland Transportation and Navigation

- Boats - Vehicles - Aircraft

The Everglades - Restoration

- Broad, shallow pool of water slowly seeping south - Highly seasonal rainfall * Wet: May - Oct * Dry: Nov - Apr - High inter annual variation in rainfall

Adaptations to Fire - Animals

- Burrowing, seeking thermal or aquatic refuge - Fleeing - Exploiting fleeing animals - Exploiting post fire tender vegetation

Communications - Safety

- Cell phones - radios - Emergency locator Beacon (ELT) - Satellite phones

Chesapeake Bay - Sea-Level Rise in the Chesapeake

- Chesapeake Bay extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise - Many places along the bay have seen a one-foot increase in relative sea-level rise over the 20th century With its expansive coastline, low-lying topography, and growing coastal population, the Chesapeake Bay region is among the places in the nation most vulnerable to sea-level rise.  Average sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay have been rising. Many places along the bay have seen a one-foot increase in relative sea-level rise over the 20th century, six inches due to global warming and another six inches due to naturally subsiding coastal lands--a factor that places the Chesapeake Bay region at particular risk.  Already, at least 13 islands in the bay have disappeared entirely, and many more are at risk of being lost soon

Sampling Vegetation - Limitations of Remote Sensing

- Cloud cover, aerosols, canopy, etc. - Simplifying reality required - Not a panacea - Every technique, be it passive or active, has limitations in what can and cannot be detected and these must be understood carefully. - For instance, passive sensors can cover broad spatial and temporal extents, but are unable to record light at night, or through clouds and other aerosols. - Active sensors can overcome this limitation but are limited in what they can detect by the frequency that they broadcast their signals in. For instance, LiDAR often has trouble detecting water since it generally is broadcast in the NIR, a region of the EMR where light is absorbed. - Every classification scheme is an oversimplification of reality - Remote sensing is never a cure-all and there are true pitfalls that might exist when working with these data, especially when not considering the limitations up front. - There are strong advantages and disadvantages to using each sensor and platform and these tradeoffs need to be carefully considered and weighed based on the specific research questions at hand. - Every technique, be it passive or active, has limitations in what can and cannot be detected and these must be understood carefully. For instance, passive sensors can cover broad spatial and temporal extents, but are unable to record light at night, or through clouds and other aerosols. Active sensors can overcome this limitation but are limited in what they can detect by the frequency that they broadcast their signals in. For instance, LiDAR often has trouble detecting water since it generally is broadcast in the NIR, a region of the EMR where light is absorbed. - Every classification scheme is an oversimplification of reality - Remote sensing is never a cure-all and there are true pitfalls that might exist when working with these data, especially when not considering the limitations up front. - Also, just FYI: I spent the last 2 years attempting to complete the surface water model that I am only just now creating. This was not how long I expected it to take. This stuff can take much longer than you initially anticipate

Managing Hydrology - National Wildlife Refuge System

- Coastal emphasis - Multiple Use impoundments - Management = water control Impoundment management is a huge area of wetland management, and perhaps no more so than in the National Wildlife Refuge System. Most have wetlands, most control water for fisheries and wildlife, and most have conflicts in water use.

Boat and ORV - Negative Impacts on Wetlands

- Damage to vegetation - Erosion of soils - Changes in Hydrology - Studies in both Alaska and the Everglades have demonstrated that airboat trails change water flow and hydrology - Sea grass damage - airboats trails create flow cuts through dense vegetation (may even create highways for invasive aquatic species)

Vector Control - Issues with Parallel Grid Ditching

- Destroyed habitat - Changed the system's hydrology - Altered geomorphology - Resulted in loss of organisms that eat mosquitos - Drained marshes provided spoil areas * Perfect ephemeral habitat for mosquitos to breed in! Conclusion: Leave salt marsh wetlands wet! standing water is not producing our worst pests. They are increasing in numbers and frequency of invasions as more land is drained for development and spoil areas are produced and allowed to intermittently hold water picture = Peconic Bay in New York

Getting your wetland transportation to the wetland

- Do you have the appropriate vehicle to tow your boat? - Can you operate that vehicle with a trailer? - Is there a place to launch when you get there? - Boat ramp conditions (orange lake example), tides, adds an entirely new element to transportation, trailering is a necessary skill, knowing how to launch and load boats, driving through traffic, changing tires, etc.

Mosquitos - Egg-Laying Strategies

- Eggs can be deposited on the water surface, on the ground, in tree holes - Two main habitat preferences: * floodwater-ephemeral * permanent aquatic - Eggs can persist for years until flooded conditions occur - Eggs are very sensitive to environmental conditions, generally hatch when dissolved oxygen drops Females can lay up to 300 eggs at a time!!! Aedes is an example of mosquito that chooses floodwater-ephemeral habitat in natural systems Anopheles and Culex are examples of permanent or semi-permanent oviposition preferences picture (left to right) = Anopheles, Aedes, Culex

The Chesapeake Watershed

- Encompasses a huge watershed: 64,000 mi^2 - In comparison, the Everglades watershed is 11,000 mi^2 - The area of the bay alone is 4,479 mi^2

Seagrass Restoration - Scaling Up for Larger Acreage

- External propagation - Large scale planting efforts - Seed planting for some species - Use in mitigation? Promises, promises Micropropagation Port of Miami mitigation area (picture)

Self-Reinforcing Ecosystem Controls - Burned

- Flammable fuels and architecture - Ignite easier - Carry fire better - Burn hotter - Stable state is pyrogenic

Flooding

- Flash Floods - Debris - Unpredictable current - Electrocution

Lightning

- Florida- number one in lightning deaths (10 - 13) - An average of 47 people killed each year in US - Flash bang range system is 5 seconds per mile. - Florida is #1 for lightning fatalities and has more than double than #2 under a tree is second leading cause of death, height, pointy shapes, and isolation are dominant factors of lightning strikes, an average of 49 people killed each year with around 9 of those people in florida

Managing Hydrology - Oxygenation

- Flow controls oxygenation, oxygenation affects productivity - We have not talked as much about flow and oxygenation - here the example is salt marshes where root zones are oxygenated by fiddler crab burrows (left) or not (right). This difference in productivity is large enough to change whether the system is a net carbon importer or exporter. Tide and flow in other forms can also bring oxygen on a regular basis to wetland systems.

Seagrasses

- Flowering, rooted plants - Pollinate underwater - Not "seaweed", not algae - Growing in marine waters - 12 genera, 58 spp worldwide - Often clonal - Shallow meadows to 15 m depth - Need 15 - 25% of light at surface - Unique marine habitat - Highly productive - High carbon storage - High global vulnerability

Sampling Vegetation - Classified Image

- Getting it to separate out things based on the colors its seeing - Which one of these is which type of vegetation, etc. picture = UAS example of same image now classified based on spectral reflectance of each vegetation type

Hazards of Field Work in Wetlands

- Hazardous modes of transportation (aircraft #1) - Weather (lightning, heat, humidity, etc.) - Dangerous flora and fauna - Getting stranded or lost - Dehydration, Hypothermia, and Hyperthermia - Injuries - Allergies - Potential to run into criminal activity in remote areas - Infections - Need to self rescue or wait hours or even days for help to arrive

Waterfowl Diseases

- Herpesvirus, highly contagious - Results in very high mortality when ducks are close together - Came from European domestic ducks in 1940 - 1970 - Became nationwide by 1970's Waterfowl diseases are critical features of managing ducks, both because they cause massive dieoffs, and because water management may have a lot to do with transmission of diseases Duck plague is actually a herpesvirus, transmitted directly between ducks in close contact. Crowded conditions are becoming more common in refuges, especially during droughts.

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques

- High energy sites - Limerick boulders A local development is the use of oyster encrusted clam aquaculture bags - these are associated with the growing of clams in large durable mesh bags,

Eustatic Sea Level

- Highest in September - Lowest in January - Due to seasonal ocean cooling Low tides shift from early morning (fall and winter) to late evening (late spring and summer) - Note time in between (early fall, early spring) no low tides - During daylight!

Managing Hydrology - Hydroperiod

- Hydroperiod strongly determines plant community Hydroperiod is a dominant determinant of plant community composition - why? Because special adaptations are needed to withstand inundation that many wetland plants have but terrestrial plants do not. - Hydroperiod has strong influences on soil type and chemistry - Hydroperiod strongly influences soil oxygenation, and the form of nutrients that are available, the bulk density of soil, and the ability of bacteria to decompose organic material.

Humidity

- In hot and humid weather, you cannot cool effectively because sweat does not evaporate - In cold and humid weather you cannot stay warm

Biocontrol: Mosquitofish

- In the 1920s, Gambusia were introduced to Australia to control mosquito outbreaks - This biocontrol effort completely backfired - Gambia outcompeted natural predators of mosquitos - As generalists, they didn't exclusively target mosquito larvae - Mosquito problem actually got worse in Australia Mosquitofish now listed as a noxious species and environmental hazard in Australia. picture = Gambusia holbrooki

Fire Regimes

- Interactions with humans, animals - Climate strongly affects fire regime - Shift to non-flammable vegetation in one-way, self reinforcing History of Fire Suppression Leads to.. - Hotter, more intense and dangerous fires - Shifts towards non-pyrogenic communities - Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function - Altered nutrient regimes - Higher maintenance - High cost of reversal

Everglades & Kissimmee River Restoration

- Landscape scale hydrological restoration of wetlands Central Everglades, Picayune Strand, Kissimmee River

Biological Hazards

- Large predators (alligators, bears, panthers, sharks) - Venomous animals (snakes, rays) - Insects (mosquitos, ticks, bees) - Poisonous Plants (poison ivy)

Everglades Restration - Phase IVB Construction

- Looking northwest at re-carving the river channel at the south end of Phase IVB - Re-carving complete - Channel side slopes are cut before the center is excavated

Chesapeake Bay - Blue Crab: Steep Decline in the 1990s

- Loss of habitat - Over-exploitation - Anoxia - Dredging for 'pregnant' female crabs in the winter

Wetland Fire as a Tool - 1

- Maintain open aspect, nonwoody vegetation Corkscrew Swamp and Lack of Prescribed Fire

Wetland Fire as a Tool - 2

- Maintain or create open/edge mosaic Examples: Palo Verde National Park CR

Summary of Waterfowl Diseases

- Many of the diseases are new, from other countries or domestic animals - Crowding greatly enhances transmission of these diseases - Animals typically concentrate into places with lead shot in mud - Numbers of wintering wetlands shrinking, become more highly managed

Propulsion - Surface Drives

- Mudmotor, Longtail, Go-Devil - Run in shallow water, weeds, and mud - Low horsepower engines-limits size and weight of boat - Potentially high impact - Loud

Sampling Vegetation - Resolution and Space

- Negative relationship (increase in spatial scale decreases resolution) - Keep your bets hedged by working at the high resolution scale....but will cost billions of dollars and you'll never be able to sample the whole area

Seagrass Restoration - Restoration of an Ecosystem - Virginia Coast Reserve

- No eelgrass since 1933 - 11 years of planting by seed - Gradual takeover by Zostera - Increase in water clarity, sediment deposition - Positive feedback loop Decrease in turbidity

Self-Reinforcing Ecosystem Controls - Unburned

- Nonpyrogenic fuels - Ignite poorly, Burn rarely - Carry fire only in extreme circumstances - Fire buildup - Stand - replacement fires are the only large fires - Stable state is nonpyrogenic

Sampling Vegetation - Sensors for Wetland Monitoring

- Not great tools for density - General background on a few common sensors and imagery used for wetland monitoring

Mosquitos - Issues with Chemical Control

- Not species specific - Aerial application is less specific than ground application * Missing important habitat reduces effectiveness greatly! - Larvicide or adulticide resistance may develop at sub-lethal doses - Chemicals are harmful to other organisms * DDT * Temephos Chemical control - can kill non vector mosquitos

Sampling Vegetation - Synthetic Aperture Radar

- Note active sensor - sends out energy - High spatial resolution - Allows you to look at water underneath the canopy Advantages: - can penetrate clouds/canopy Disadvantages: - temporal availability - lots of noise - poor visual interpretation Applications: - Detect hydrologic features below canopy - Estimate biomass Ex: RADARSAT-1, Seasat - SAR platforms send out a radar signal to bounce off the object at longer wavelengths (microwave) than the previous two types of sensors. - These sensors have spatial resolution and the ability to determine depth. When coupled with multi-/hyperspectral data, the user has the ability to more accurately classify wetland land-cover types.

Sampling Vegetation - Hyperspectral Imagery

- Numerous (>100), narrow spectral bands Another type of Passive Sensor - Similar to multispectral, but with much more narrow bands, allowing for finer discrimination of spectral signatures among a variety of vegetative features Applications: - Mapping SAV - Plant moisture stress - Water quality - Oiled marshes - Be able to differentiate very specific spectral signatures, thus enabling mapping of invasive species, precision agriculture, etc. Ex: AVIRIS, HyspIRI

Sampling Vegetation - Image Classification

- Objective: Map wetland vegetation - Validated with on-the-ground data Example: Vegetation mapping in Connecticut wetlands - Object was to map and monitor changes in vegetation coverage in a Connecticut marsh of dominant plant species: - salt grass - cattail - common reed

Sampling Vegetation - Whats the Question?

- Occurrence - Composition (whats out there?) - Detecting changes due to management - Mapping exotic vegetation - Understanding drivers of change (fire, hydro) - Is there enough resources? (cover, food)

Threats to Eastern Oyster reefs

- Overharvest - Development & Pollution - Reductions in freshwater into estuaries - Erosion from boat wakes & storms - Disease/salinity relationships - Contamination - Changing climate (water temp, sea level, rainfall, storms) - Ocean acidification So why are they declining? There are a suite of reasons, many of which may operate in multiple places, or in sequence. Overharvest and pollution of various kinds are the most commonly blamed. One important point - by stressing or reducing populations of oysters, we alter their ability to maintain their own environment and so reduce their resilience to respond to further stress. We bump oysters into the ball and socket of an alternative stable state, and once that point is achieved it can be very hard to restore the original conditions in part because the original conditions relied on large populations of oysters. Thresholds become very high. Classic resilience situation.

Oyster Reef Loss - Chesapeake Bay

- Oyster bars in the Chesapeake are subtidal - Skipjack sail boat with a port side dredge - Oyster bar loss affected all the organisms that use oyster reefs as habitat Oyster bars that were once a navigational hazard got dredged away to nothing. picture = Skipjack sail boat with a port side dredge

Peat Management and Global Warming

- Peat susceptible to burning when dry - Increased drying in cast boreal peat wetlands - Long accumulation history mimics fossil fuel storage - Increased drying in non-boreal wetlands - Interactions with cyclic weather patterns (ENSO, PDO, NAO) - Runaway feedback loop to global warming Drained peat is 0.3% of earth's surface, 6% of carbon emissions

Managing Hydrology - Should We Attract Birds to Wastewater Wetlands?

- Physical hazards (power lines, cars) - Predation by cats, pets - Human disturbance and harassment - Pesticides, herbicides - Hydrocarbons, heavy metals - Diseases - High concentrations of nutrients It is unclear whether exposure is good or bad - sometimes these are the only wetland habitats for miles. But wildlife is exposed to a variety of hazards.

Primary producers in the Chesapeake:

- Phytoplankton (microscopic algae and cyanobacteria) - Algae - Seagrasses - Salt marsh wetland plants

Oyster Over-Harvest and Decline

- Piles of oysters in 1884 - Oyster wars

Managing Hydrology - Eustronglylidosis - The Big Red Worm Disease

- Possible debilitating effects in adults - Presents as appendicitis in humans

How to Best Manage Nest Predation - Waterfowl

- Predator control vs fallow areas around potholes Fallow management: -Higher nest success - Reduced nest predation - Benefits other wetland species - Less costly "Cost" depends on who is planting, what profit margins are like.

Detrimental Effects of Fire in Wetlands

- Prescribed fire leads to peat fire suppression - Killing desirable plant communities with aseasonal burning - Fire suppression leads to intense, uncontrollable fires - Beneficial fire frequencies poorly known - Negative impacts on surrounding communities can affect burning for a generation Tendency to burn uniformly - nowhere for wildlife to run

Vector Control - The World's Deadliest Animals

- Psorophora horrida - Culex perfidious - Mansonia perturbans - Aedes vexans - Aedes tormentor

Sampling Vegetation - Quadrat Sampling

- Random or even spacing? - Estimate coverage - Harvest biomass? - Belowground?? This is a conventional floristic technique (in situ), but it has deficiencies: - Labor intensive - Costly - Time consuming - Sometimes inapplicable due to poor accessibility (Thus, only practical on relatively small areas) With remote sensing: - Large areal extents can be more easily assayed - Less expensive - Less labor intensive - Less time consuming - Fairly easy data interpretation in GIS - Benefit of having repeat coverage for change detection analysis

Mosquitos - Adults

- Relatively few bloodsucking mosquitos! - Most of the 3500 species feed on nectar and other plant juices - Some mosquitos trick ants into regurgitating nectar! - Of the bloodsucking species, only females take blood meals to get protein for eggs The males of the bloodsucking species still eat nectar

Everglades Restration - Project Objectives

- Restore and enhance wetlands in Picayune Strand and adjacent public lands by reducing over-drainage - Improve the water quality of coastal estuaries by moderating the large salinity fluctuations caused by point discharge of freshwater from the Faka Union Canal.

Blue Carbon - Sequestration in the Oceans

- Seagrass beds sequester 3X as much carbon per hectare as tropical rain forests - Most of that carbon is below ground - Carbon transferred to other parts of the food web

Ecological Services of Seagrass Meadows

- Sediment retention/stabilization - Nutrient sequestration - Carbon storage - High primary productivity - Nursery habitat - Endangered species habitat *Manatees and sea turtles * 11 of 28 endangered U.S fishes Note that most of the commercial fishes harvested in the Gulf of Mexico spend some part of their life cycle in seagrass meadows. There are a huge number of coral reef species that also spend their juvenile period within the structure and refuge provided by seagrasses. The collapse of eelgrass beds in the Chesapeake is one of the main reasons for the collapse of blue crab harvests - crabs need a safe refuge to shed shells throughout their life and to mate. Note that the dollar value of seagrass beds is over 20k/ha/yr, which is more than many tax assessments.

Ecosystem Services of Oyster Reefs

- Shoreline protection - Water quality improvement - Fish/invert habitat (0.24 g m-1 yr-1) - Carbon sequestration (long term storage) - Nutrient sequestration (to 556 kg N ha-1 yr-1) - Water column integration - Oyster harvest - Entrainment of estuarine conditions - Recreation - Endangered species habitat

Sampling Vegetation - Multispectral Imagery

- Spatial resolutions: >1 km - 0.5 m - Moderate spectral and high temporal resolutions - Good for mapping water and vegetation Applications: mapping wetland boundaries, change detection - (True color) Ex: Landsat, MODIS - These sensors collect information on spectral emittance of energy, often longer wave (such as mid-infrared and thermal). Therefore, they are PASSIVE sensors - Spatial resolutions: Ranging between AVHRR's 1.1 km spatial resolution and 3,000 km swath width to sensors like WorldView-2 that have 0.46m resolution and swaths of 16 km - Moderate spectral and high temporal resolutions - many of these sensors are excellent at detecting in the infrared portion of the EM spectrum, which is particularly well-suited for detecting water and vegetation, since vegetation has a high reflectance in the near-infrared and water strongly absorbs in the same region. picture = multispectral image (true color) using Everglades example - this was taken from a UAS. The sensor onboard shot in multispectral

Fire Effects

- Strongly favors fire adapted plants and animals - Opening, clearing of vegetation - Simplified vertical structure - Intermediate successional state - Reduced aboveground biomass - Altered nutrient pools and types - Deliberation of nutrients - Mineralized soils - Effects determined by intensity, duration, frequency, timing

Aircraft - Uses

- Survey general landscape and vegetation features - Transportation to otherwise unreachable sites - Telemetry on wildlife capable of moving large distances - Surveys of large animals or groups of animals (alligators, marine mammals, bird colonies) - Nesting colonies, foraging flocks, flight line surveys

Vector Control - Another Management Strategy: Continuous Flooding During Warm Season

- Targets mosquitos that need ephemeral wet conditions and lay eggs on moist soil 40,000 acres were impounded along Florida coast before mid 1970s - Wetlands were originally cutoff from tidal water Issues: - Expensive diking and control - Prolonged flooding = vegetation loss - Stagnation: low oxygen levels, low productivity - Reduced fish biodiversity Done East Coast of Florida like crazy Continuous flooding - problems: stagnant water, North Carolina - flushing every so often Keep water high - - flooded all summer long because salt marsh mosquitos need soil... Land remembered - book about Up and down east coast - salt marsh management issue....

Wetland Fire as a Tool - 3

- Temporarily or sequentially improve palatability of wetland vegetation to grazers: - deer, geese, muskrats, cattle

A history of managing hydrology in salt marsh wetlands to control mosquitos

- The Civilian Conservation Corps started ditching in the 1930s * Parallel grid ditches, 150 ft apart - Premise: Draining wetlands with ditches will remove mosquitos - 90 % of 227,433 ha of salt marsh from Maine to Virginia converted to 562,000 miles of parallel grid ditches - So, if you already know where mosquitos are present, and which habitats they are likely to prefer, you can go straight for source reduction - the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) started digging parallel grid ditches in wetlands up and down the Atlantic coast - Altered geomorphology because the dirt from the ditch was just mounded up right next to the ditch itself, so it created berms, areas of heighted elevation picture = Aerial view of parallel grid ditches at Assateague Island National Seashore

Biocontrol: Sterile Insect Technique

- The screw-worm fly was the first insect successfully eradicated by SIT - Screw-worm larvae are currently becoming a problem in the Florida Keys deer population By The Mexican-American Commission for the Eradication of the Screwworm - The Mexican-American Commission for the Eradication of the Screwworm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6996390 - Screw worm fly now coming back in the keys - key deer in Florida keys - 30s and 40s worst cattle disease in Florida - Picture of the key deer - Honduras - sterile male source

How to avoid lightning and when to seek shelter

- The vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with NO cabin - If you are out and cannot get back to land and safety, drop anchor and get as low as possible - Do not stand in water - Lightning can strike 6 - 8 miles from most recent strike

Winds and Tides

- Tides never drop due to weak winds from wrong direction - Blowout tide because of winds - winter

Sampling Vegetation - Tradeoffs in Grain Size

- Tradeoff in resolution - Pixels picture = Example of grain size changing with sensors of varying spatial resolutions

Sampling Vegetation - Spatial/Temporal Tradeoff

- Tradeoff with any type of satellite information - These things don't fly all the time - Negative relationship - When choosing the appropriate remote sensing data for your question, you must consider tradeoffs between spatial, temporal, spectral, and radiometric resolutions. - Here, the tradeoff between spatial and temporal resolutions is illustrated with two satellites, MODIS, which has a fine temporal resolution (overpassing any given spot on Earth every 1-2 days), but with a coarse spatial resolution of 250 m-1 km, depending on the imagery used; and Landsat, which has a coarser temporal resolution (overpasses any location every 16 days), yet has a finer spatial resolution of 30 m. - There is a tradeoff between spatial and temporal scales and you must decide on what time and spatial scales are most important for your research question.

Sampling Vegetation - Spectral Signatures

- Two categories of light - How do you know what signature plants have? Take sensor - hold it over plant and get the remote sensing value - Validation is an important step - Example of the variability in spectral signatures of different wetland types plotted for the near infrared and red bands. Note how Phragmites marsh, Juncus marsh, and wet meadow have overlapping signatures. Open water, however, is spectrally very separable from the others - Different sensors have varying capacity to differentiate spectra. Hyperspectral imagery has the capacity to make fine distinctions between vegetation type. There are tradeoffs in using these data that we'll discuss.

Sampling Vegetation - How does Vegetation Change with Hydroperiod?

- Use existing elevation as a proxy for hydroperiod - Sample from high to low in transects - Use quadrants at every 3 meters, harvest all above ground - As hydroperiod increases, you may have a couple communities that start to migrate around in space in a fairly predictable way

Sampling Vegetation - Monitoring Wetlands at Large Scales (need for remote sensing)

- Vegetation change - Hydrology - Crops and Exotics examples of reasons: 1. Classification of vegetation types for monitoring, vegetation change, etc. 2. Hydrology - example from river floodplains in Amazon basin: high annual and interannual variability in rainfall and concomitant river stage, leading to dynamics in floodplain wetland inundation. This group used satellite imagery to detect changes in inundation patterns in the wet and dry seasons and develop a classification scheme 3. Need to identify or monitor specific crops to understand agriculture, invasions, etc. - ex: Water hyacinth invasive mapping

Chesapeake Bay - Increasing oyster production with aquaculture

- Virginia growers planted 107 million oysters in 2014 and sold 40 million - Revenue in 2014 was $15.4 million - growers planted 107.1 million single oysters and sold 39.8 million single oysters for an estimated revenue of $15.4 million, up from $11.1 million in 2013.

Adaptations to Fire - Plants

- Volatile compounds in vegetation - Accumulation of aboveground dead material - Protective bark or stems - Loss of aboveground fine structure in fire season - Rapid regeneration of aboveground post fire - Tolerance of wide thermal regimes and humidities

Chesapeake Bay - Community Involvement: Maryland Oyster Gardening Program

- Volunteers grow oysters for a year - Adult oysters are returned to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - The oysters are planted on sanctuary reefs in Maryland waters Oysters as ecosystem engineers! To grow oysters, each participant builds a set of oyster cages from wire mesh, which will hang from the dock. The gardener also receives several thousand seed oysters.  Gardeners grow their oysters in the cages for about a year until the oysters are about one to two inches long. The gardener then returns the adult oysters to CBF, and our staff plant the oysters onto sanctuary (non-harvest) reefs in Maryland waters. The gardener starts over with a new batch of seed. The hope is that each gardener will continue to produce a new crop of healthy adult oysters year after year

Mosquitos as Disease Vectors

- We've known mosquitos carry viruses, bacteria, protozoans, nematodes since 1878 - It was originally thought malaria was caused by breathing in "bad air" from swamps - 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria each year In 1878 a parasitologist proved that mosquitos transmitted a disease called filariasis, caused by nematode worms

Wetland Field Safety

- Weather hazards - Physical hazards - Biological Hazards - Planning ahead - Developing a safety culture

Flow Control Structures

- Weirs, gates, orifices, spillways, etc. - Measure flow rate - Control flows/levels - Dissipate Energy

Tides

- Working time - Getting stuck traveling to field site - Getting stuck leaving field site - Getting stranded

Sampling Vegetation - Line-Intercept Method

- Works for herbs, but not for trees - Stretch tape or line along a transect and ask how much of that line is occupied by each species - Provides percent cover (often a measure of dominance in that system)

Plan on Getting lost and Stranded

- establish routes ahead of time - this may include conditions such as water levels, tides, vegetation growth, etc. - Carry multiple tools for navigation (GPS, map and compass) - Be able to retrace your path - Know the limits of your mode of transportation

Seagrass Restoration Techniques

1) Expensive 2) Often does not work (70%) 3) Stressors often larger than restoration area 4) Large restorations work much better than small

Seagrass Restoration - Repairing Prop Scars and Groundings

1) Measurement for materials and approach. 2) Restore substrate surface using crushed limerock, sediment tubes 3) Plant using nearby sources 4) Bird perch stakes 5) MONITOR!

27) What are two main ways to manage predation on duck nests in the Prairie Pothole region?

1) Predator control - reducing populations of predators 2) Increasing cover surrounding prairie potholes to make it much harder for predators to find duck nests.

Why are estuaries so productive?

1) Sediment/nutrient deposition from upstream inputs (rivers, streams, creeks) 2) Mixing of salt and fresh water creates a salt water wedge which provides refuge for many planktonic larvae 3) The length of the salt water wedge creates many different salinity zones and habitat types 4) Opposing fresh and salt water currents lead to entrapment of sediment in the null zone Primary producers include phytoplankton, algae, sea grasses, and salt-marsh plants.

Give common and scientific names of the big four seagrasses in the eastern U.S.

1) Turtlegrass Thalassia testudinum 2) Widgeongrass Ruppia maritima 3) Eelgrass Zostera maritima 4) Shoalgrass Halodule wrightii

Sampling Vegetation - Remote Sensing Steps

1. Determine your question! - The research question will guide your choice of sensor and platform 2. Acquire Imagery 3. Process Imagery - (e.g., atmospheric corrections, noise reductions, rectification, etc.) 4. Geo-reference ("ground-truth") imagery with in situ data 5. Identify training samples based on "spectrally pure pixels" - (i.e., pixels strongly representing the spectral signature of the object being sensed) 6. Image processing - (e.g., classification of wetlands or identification of features like water inundation) 7. Image validation: - using in situ or independent data set, determine how well image is correctly classified Validation! - has to be independent

Seagrasses - The Big 4 in the Eastern US

1. Eelgrass - Zostera marina 2. Turtlegrass - Thalassia testudinum 2. Widgeongrass - Ruppia marítima 4. Manatee grass - Syringodium filiforme

Evapotranspiration - Calculation Methods

1. Empirical equations using climate data (PET) 2. Energy Balance (radiation), Aerodynamic (wind effect, vapor deficit) 3. Lysimeters and Eddy Covariance Towers 4. Sap Flow/ Velocity Measurements

Why do plants Transpire?

1. Evaporative cooling 2. Nutrient transport/uptake 3. CO2 uptake 4. Water uptake 5. Only ~ 1% of H20 consumed by plants is used in photosynthesis

Monitoring Hydrology - Measuring Water Level Logger Types

1. Float-Pully-Drum 2. Pressure Transducers - vented - non-vent (H=L-B) 3. Lasers, Sonar, etc.

Measuring Surface Flows: 2 Flavors

1. Flow Control Structures: - weirs - orifices - pipes - etc. 2. Velocity-Area Method + Rating Curves

Fire-Adapted Ecosystems

1. Ignition Source - need to be near lightning or volcanoes 2. Fire adapted vegetation 3. Landscape - topography and architecture to carry fire 4. Thermal regimes that support fire seasonally

22) Describe two likely conflicts in managing an impoundment for aquatic birds and wastewater nutrient removal.

1. Incidence of avian parasitism and disease may increase eg Eustrongylides. 2. Presence of nesting birds that are protected may constrain water management, making wastewater treatment less efficient.

Objective: Attraction of waterfowl in fall and winter

1. Planting spring/summer, 2. Flood late summer and fall 3. Waterfowl feed on seed heads, fallen grain, inverts Planting of impoundments with either crops or native grasses followed by flooding is the most common method to attract and maintain ducks in the winter.

The Lightning Position

1. Put your feet together to reduce the effects of ground current 2. Crouch to reduce the effects of side flash and upward leaders 3. Don't touch long conductors to avoid contact voltage

What drives Evapotranspiration?

1. Radiation --> Energy 2. Temperature --> Energy 3. Humidity --> Capacity of air to receive ET 4. Wind --> "Flushing" rate

What controls Runoff?

1. Soils --> infiltration rate 2. Rainfall rate 3. Topography important considerations: - infiltration rate is NOT constant - rainfall intensity is NOT constant - soils are very heterogeneous - must account for layered soils

What do you need for a Water Budget? (or any mass balance)

1. System Boundary 2. Inflows and Outflows 3. Spatial and temporal scales 4. A question...why?

How does Hydrology affect Wetlands?

1. Unique Vegetation Composition 2. Primary productivity 3. Accumulation of organic matter 4. Nutrient cycling

Monitoring Vegetation: Take home message

1. Well-defined research question guides imagery or method use - (this will dictate the appropriate grain and extent of the study) 2. Multiple data sources often compliment one another - (use of several types of remote sensing sensors can often synergistically compliment one another) 3. Multiple tools at your disposal 4. Validation is crucial

Tides - Ekman Spiral Effect

1. Wind 2. Force from above 3. Effective direction of the current 4. Coriolis effect North and NE winds push water out East and Se winds push water in SW and West winds can be neutral Effect depends upon Speed and Duration

Herps (questions 12 - 15)

12) Eastern Spadefoot Toad Scaphiopus holbrooki (call) 13) Florida Softshell Apalone ferox (specimen) 14) Marbled Salamander Ambystoma opacum (specimen) 15) Cane Toad Rhinella marina (picture)

Sex Ratios in Mallards

1900: - Males: 110 - Females: 100 1939: - Males: 117 - Females: 100 1964: - Males: 129 - Females: 100

Managing Hydrology - Managing Water for Conflicting Objectives

2. Conflicting use of natural resources Agriculture/Urban vs. Estuaries - Whooping Cranes, Jax vs. Nature Coast Upstream vs. Downstream Nutrient Pollution - Everglades Aquaculture vs. Estuaries - Conflict or Win-WIn? Stormwater Treatment vs. Wildlife - Conflict vs. Win-Win Emergency Flood Releases - St. Lucie Inlet and Louisiana

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Harris Creek MD.

350 acres planted 2010 - 2015 Self-sustaining and exporting larvae

Birds (questions 5 - 8 Common name only.

5) Wood Duck (skin) 6) American Bittern (skin) 7) Clapper Rail (call) 8) Black Rail (call)

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - It's not cheap!

51 million in construction costs

Fish and inverts (questions 9 - 11) Common and scientific name.

9) Mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki 10) Blue crab Callinectes sapidus 11) Sand fiddler crab Uca pugilator

Managing Hydrology - How do Wildlife React to these Areas of Higher Nutrient Content?

? In general, instead of staying in the protected wetland, they tend to move towards the treatment wetlands.

Sampling Vegetation - GIS

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is an integrative computer system that uses spatial data with associated feature class information to conduct spatially explicit analyses, remote sensing is a tool that produces a land cover layer that can be incorporated into a GIS.

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Oyster Encrusted Clam Aquaculture Bags

A local development is the use of oyster encrusted clam aquaculture bags. Explain aquaculture technique. Continous production. Supplies durable substrate, cultch and live oyster reef community. - 8,000 oysters per damaged clam bag

Oyster Reef Feedback Loops - Nutrient Pollution

A second feedback loop related to the first is the effect of nutrient pollution on algal blooms and anoxia. These conditions prevail in a number of large embayed estuaries (Chesapeake, Pamlico sounds). The feedback again is that as you reduce populations of oysters the ability to clear the water and maintain conditions is grossly reduced. In colonial era times, Chesapeake populations of oysters are estimated to have turned over the entire volume of the Bay in 2 - 4 days. Today it is on the order of decades. This of course has importance to the first feedback loop - getting hit with overharvest AND nutrient pollution exacerbates the resilience problem tremendously.

Oyster Reef Feedback Loops - Salinity

A third feedback loop has to do with salinity. Increasing upstream usage in many drainages has led to increased salinities in many parts of the southeast, from Pamlico to Florida Bay. This of course leads to increased mortality. Remember oysters may only live 2 years and turnover is high. Without significant recruitment, entire bars can die out due to disease and predation during periods of low freshwater input. The unexpected part is that if those high salinity events are long enough, the dead reefs can break up and wash away quickly, leaving zero substrate for oysters to recruit to. Near Cedar Key, myself and colleagues Jenn Seavey, Bill Pine, and Leslie Sturmer have documented a net 66% loss of all oyster reefs in 30 years and an 88% loss of the freshwater entraining offshore reef complexes. This is on reefs that are thought to be over 3000 years old. So a tipping point has definitely been hit in the freshwater input/salinity relationship - this is one that reefs cannot come back from on their own.

Measuring Wetland Topography/Bathymetry

Access and Methods: - Optical/laser levels - Static/Kinematic GPS - LiDAR Survey Requirements = f(site)....but 1 - ft contours at minimum 1 + good benchmarks --> tie to local USGS benchmarks

Sampling Vegetation - Hands-on Sampling Advantages & Disadvantages

Actually measuring something on the ground Advantages: - Yields repeatable measures (go back to same spot GPS) - Fine scale results - Species-specific results if you want - Can return to the same plants - Destructive or nondestructive - True validation of remote techniques Disadvantages: - Cannot sample large areas efficiently - Expensive - Slow - Accessibility? - Private lands - can be an issue - Safety - Need an airboat, etc.

Monitoring Mosquito Adults

Adult surveys: Determine whether source reduction or larval reduction methods are working using: - Landing rates - Mechanical traps - Light traps - Bug vacuums/suction traps - Resting boxes - BG-sentinel trap Sticky resting box - passive collection of adult mosquitos BG sentinel trap dispenser which releases a combination of non-toxic substances that are also found on human skin (ammonia, lactic acid, and caproic acid), picture = light box

Mosquitos - Chemical Control Adulticides

Adulticides: - Malathion, Dibrom, Permethrin - Ultra Low Volume (ULV) application - Fogging machines Adulticides applied via truck or aircraft Many adulticides are non specific - by the time you get adults, you've got a real problem and need to manage habitat or you have flooded conditions. etc

Sampling Vegetation - UAV - Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages - Fly low - Get details Limitations: - Battery - Range - Regulations (drone pilot license) - Expensive

Sampling Vegetation - LiDAR - Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages: - Able to create DEMs (Digital Elevation Models of vegetation, bathymetry, and elevation) Disadvantages: - Difficulty with open water - Emit reflectance in the near infrared regions - returns "no data"

Airboats

Advantages: - Can go through vegetation - Minimal water needed, can even run dry ground for short distances - Submerged obstacles present minimal hazard -Elevated seating provides better view -Less direct environmental damage compared to other shallow water options Disadvantages: -Expensive, both to buy and operate - Harder working conditions means more wear and tear on parts - Very fuel inefficient, consumes oil - Loud - hearing protection required - More dangerous than other boats (not US Coast Guard certified) -Special operator training recommended -Minimal room for equipment and other cargo - Little room for passengers

Track Vehicles

Advantages: - Difficult to get stuck Disadvantages: - Relatively slow - High impact vehicle

Sampling Vegetation - Remote Sensing - Advantages

Advantages: - less expensive - less labor-intensive - less time consuming - fairly less data interpretation in GIS - repeat coverage for change detection analysis

Sampling Vegetation - Synthetic Aperture Radar - Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages: - Can penetrate clouds/canopy Disadvantages: - Temporal availability - Lots of noise - Poor visual interpretation

Sampling Vegetation - Hyperspectral Imagery - Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages: - Discrimination of plants to species Disadvantages: - Clouds - Canopy cover - Expensive - Phenology - Longer, more complicated processing demands - Higher costs for image acquisition

Swamp Buggies and Rolligans

Advantages: - Carry lots of gear - Get places no boat or truck can Disadvantages: - Can still get stuck - Deep mud - Too much water - Holes or rough terrain - High environmental impact Many float in water

Sampling Vegetation - Multispectral Imagery: Advantages and Limitations

Advantages: - Many freely available (The spatial and temporal coverage is vast and many of these are freely available) - Older (1970s) Limitations: - Cloud cover - Aerosols - Smoke - Vegetative canopy can obscure the emitted EM signal from the object being sensed.

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - New York Harbor

Alabama 100 /1000 Partnership - Restore 100 miles of oyster reef - Restore 1000 acres of salt marsh

How to Use Models - Waterfowl Management

And calculating DED from those data. This is very useful for tight management and for allowing landowners to predict what they might attract.

Managing Hydrology - Water for Cities or Estuaries?

And here is a sticky example of trying to manage an entire watershed while much of the water is disappearing underground to another water management unit. Net result is less discharge from the main river (Suwannee) at any rainfall level.

Managing Hydrology - Ribeiroia ondarae - Life Cycle

Another example of a parasitic cycle affected by increased nutrients and agricultural chemicals.

Highly Harvested Species in the Bay

Atlantic Menhaden - most important fish in the sea - important food chain base because plankton feeders second largest fishery in the United States... The Chesapeake has historically been the most important nursery area for Menhaden fisheries... We don't eat menhaden meat but the oil from them go into paints, cosmetics, animal feeds, and human diet supplements. Eastern Oyster Blue Crab American Shad Striped Bass Bay Anchovy

Waterfowl Diseases - Avian Cholera

Avian Cholera - Bacterium Pasturella multocida - Unknown in U.S. until 1940's - Probable transfer from diseased poultry - Highly infectious, highly contagious - "Sudden death" - Rapid cleanup of carcasses - Reduce crowding - Add water to dilute bacterium Avian cholera is a bacterial disease, probably brought into the US by diseased poultry. Rapid transmission and sudden death, where animals literally fall out of the sky....

28) Describe one of the major waterfowl diseases, including the disease agent and how it spreads.

Avian Cholera - bacterium Pasturella multocida spread by water and contact among ducks. Duck Plague - herpesvirus spread by contact among ducks Avian botulism - spread by Clostridium botulinum type C, typically spread by maggots in carcasses which ducks eat. Lead shot poisoning - caused by ingestion of spent lead shot by ducks looking for grit. Agent is spread by hunters.

Biocontrol: Genetically Sterilized Mosquitos

Benefits: - Species specific - No environmental side-effects - Most cost effective at low population densities Gene drive mosquitos engineered to fight malaria -- anti-malarial gene Insert mutation and copy mutation from one chromosome to another

Waterfowl Disease - Botulism

Botulism - Caused by toxins released by Clostridium botulinum type C - Highly infectious outbreaks cause 1 - 5 million deaths - Affects central nervous System - Symptoms are paralysis, drooping heads Botulism is a class of bacteria which can affect humans and livestock. Botulinum type C affects waterfowl. Highly infections, the "drooping head" disease, resulting in paralysis and often drowning. Has been known in the US since the 1920s.

Everglades Restration - Still...

But we STILL need a pump station

Objective: Attract and hold waterfowl or shorebirds fall - spring

Typically this takes place over an entire winter season, with the dry time during the summer.

Can aquaculture help with oyster restoration?

Ultimately, it looks like restoration is booming this is the first time in history that we have actually planted oysters and constructed bars purposefully for the ecological benefits. But this first iteration of protecting ourselves with oysters is ultimately unsustainable in that its relying on public dollars and sweat. Can we not turn the power of capitalism to this task too? There is an important divide here in philosophy - ecosystem engineer types tend to see overharvest as the bogeyman of restoration, and so wish to have a clean separation. Aquaculturists see oyster restoration without commerce as unsustainable. In France, oyster culture has been an industry for two centuries and in the U.S., we are being swept by the boutique oyster craze, which has spawned enormous innovation, competition and raw marketing. This symbolizes the power of private venture in growing oysters. If we value oyster reefs correctly, the data suggest that we could push this business to the private sector, and perhaps get some good aphrodisiac out of it too.

Managing Hydrology - Performance - STA 1W

Causes of Cell Shutdown: - Excessive volume - Cell maintenance - Revegetation - Protected migratory birds nesting Operation of these cells is strongly constrained by loading - different cells are constructed and populated with different vegetative communities. Too much flow means high loading, and can destroy the plant community, leading to very high maintenance and reconstruction costs.

Chesapeake Bay - Restoring Oyster Reefs: Providing Substrate

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Shell Recycling Program Goal: - Provide substrate for oyster spat For subtidal reefs, height matters! http://score.dnr.sc.gov/ktmlpro10/images/uploads/romaine.jpg?0.5808087068860596 https://www.loxahatcheeriver.org/pdf/oyster-2-11x17-sm.pdf Oysters are ecosystem engineers Sub-tidal in Chesapeake Bay!! 50 gals/day Taking out phytoplankton, depositing in form of shell, nutrients in recalcitrant form. Pseudo-feces - more recalcitrant form, not back into water column. Sequestering nutrients. One trib: Choptank, 23% available bottom restored to oysters to achieve total nutrient balance using oysters only!!!

Ecosystem Services - Oyster Restoration

Choptank River MD: - Restoration of all historical bars removes 48% of annual N&P inputs - Restoration of 23% of surface areas removes 100% of annual N&P - Oysters have huge documented ecosystem services. One of the most prominent is filtration of the water column and sequestration of nutrients

Everglades Restoration - Freshwater Fish Density vs. Hydroperiod

Comparison of freshwater fish density In shortened and normal Hydroperiod sites

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 5. What turned out to be the most successful restoration method

Complete removal of soil

Everglades Restration - October 3, 2012

Complex and braided system - Looking north at the Phase I restoration area October 3, 2012

Managing Hydrology - Controlling Water at Multiple Scales

Controlling water flow sounds easy - you let it out and let gravity do the work, or you pump it in. However, many wetland aquascapes are highly interconnected and flat - if you let water out of one, it has to go to another...so the interdependence of wetlands is as important a goal as the target schedules in any one impoundment.

Managing Hydrology - Kissimmee Prairie

Controlling wetland mosaics to store water At finer scale, here are historical wetlands within the Kissimmee Prairie that have been drained through a system of shallow ditches over the last 50-60 years to decrease wetland area and increase grazable pasture area as well as an increase in P exported from the landscape. wettedNow the District would like to slow this drainage down and make many of those pastures temporarily to increase dynamic storage in the basin. Dynamic storage is short term, and fluctuates with weather more than longer term storage.

Chesapeake Bay - Save the Bay!

Cost of the bay between 2003 and 2010: around 18 billion dollars

Boats

Countless combinations of: - Hull designs (shapes, materials, sizes, etc.) - Power sources - Propulsion systems

Prairie Potholes

Created by glacial material Shallow, ephemeral ponds (wetlands) Good at producing high densities of invertebrates: -Short hydroperiod (few aquatic predators) Highly seasonal (production pulsed) Shallow (inverts available to birds)

Prairie potholes and global warming

Current global warming models show this region becoming drier and warmer = more drought. By 2060, half the Prairie potholes gone, less than half the duck production And of course temperatures are rising. This could mean less surface water especially in the northern parts of the US - meaning less breeding habitat. It also may mean better conditions for the three big diseases.

Wetland Fire Ecology - Case Study: Fire in Cypress Domes

Cypress domes get their characteristic shape because they are occupying depressions - with the tallest trees in the center, smallest on the less deep, less nutrients, more fire, etc side of things. In light or intermediate intensity fires the peat is protective because it stays wet. In severe fires the centers can actually be more dangerous for trees, with deeper peat fires burning out the center and creating ponds or places that willows may occupy. The process seems to have relevance for other types of forested swamps - maple swamps for example, may be persistent unless you get deep peat fires that kill root masses.

Duck Energy Days

DED = ( Food Available (g) x TME (kcal/g) ) / Daily Energy Requirements (kcal/d) Being able to predict your attractive ability is through calculation of DED.

Sampling Vegetation - Remote Sensing

Definition: acquiring information about an object using a sensor without physically being able to proximate it. - Information that is taken not from the ground - Not the same as GIS - Remote sensing is a layer within GIS Advantages: - less expensive - less labor-intensive - less time consuming - fairly less data interpretation in GIS - repeat coverage for change detection analysis

Sampling Vegetation - Point-Quarter Method

Density = 1 / (Average Distance)^2 - I walk a line, I get to a point and look whats around me, divide into 4 quarters, within each quarter record closest plant you see, then asses characters (% coverage,)of that plant, do for all quarters. - Works for anything with a stem - Rapid, can cover large area : - Relative Basal Area - Relative Density - Relative Dominance - Relative Frequency - Weighted Wetland Index - Ecological Index Values - Importance Value = Rde + Rdo + Rf

Flats Cat

Designed for shallow water (can stay on plane in as little as 3.5" of water)

Nutrient-induced Seagrass dieoffs In Florida Bay

Did seagrasses get too dense in Florida Bay?

Predation and Disease - Oyster Restoration

Disease: - Haplosporidium nelsoni (MSX) - Perkinsus marinus ("dermo") - Temperature/salinity relationships Predation: - Whelks and snails - Large demersal fishes - Crabs - Boring Sponge Predators have a large effect on oyster populations, and diseases even more so. Both of the major diseases of eastern oysters are parasitic, working by sapping the energy reserves of oysters. The predominant disease in the SE is Dermo, which attacks nearly all oysters, and becomes an increasing problem with age of oyster - a 2 year old oyster is old in this part of the range. If you cannot grow fast, you will never reproduce before Dermo gets you. In the southern part of the range this happens regularly - in the northern part, it is so devastating as to have destroyed the fishery. In the far north, its too cold for diseases to have a major effect. Dermo has greatest effect on oysters weakened by stressors, including by contamination. Decreased salinities have lethal effects on predaceous gastropods and flatworms, as well as pathogenic protozoans that are highly destructive or debilitating to oysters.

Sampling Vegetation - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Drones Many of these platforms have the ability to carry a vast array of sensors (from multispectral to LiDAR), depending on the airframe being used and the payload that it can carry. What sensors can you use? - multispectral - hyper spectral - thermal - HD video - LiDAR Authorizations/Regulations: - Certificate of Authorization - Aircraft Airworthiness - Crew Certification - Local Permission - Notice to Airmen - Flight restrictions - Failsafe Approvals - Institutional Rules

Sampling Vegetation - Electromagnetic Spectrum

Electromagnetic Spectrum = the means by which information is transmitted from an object to a sensor - Each of these describes the energy in a specific region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum represents the continuum of electromagnetic energy from extremely short wavelengths (cosmic and gamma rays) to extremely long wavelengths (radio and television waves). - Electromagnetic waves are radiated through space from some source (e.g., Sun). When the energy encounters an object, even a very tiny one like a molecule of air, one of three reactions occurs. The radiation will be: 1. reflected off the object, 2. absorbed by the object, or 3. transmitted through the object

Estimating Seed Density - Waterfowl Management

Estimating the seed density using sampling techniques and scanning seed head size and frequency.....

What is an Estuary?

Estuary = It's where tidal waters meet fresh water. 1) Mixing of fresh and salt water results in a range of salinity zones and habitats 2) Highly productive ecosystems

Fail-Safe Plan

Ex: Titanic - never expected to fail but did, Brand new car, don't expect to fail

4. Seagrass decline is often a process involving stressors and triggers. Describe the mechanisms involved in one of these processes, and identify what are the likely stressors and triggers, and give an historical example. If they had been there in large numbers, how might large marine grazers have affected the web of causation in this process?

Example: Increased nutrients in the water result initially result in rapidly growing, uninterrupted stands of seagrass. These stands require high oxygen in the root zone, and a trigger for collapse can come in the form of high temperatures or salinities or both. Once that happens a runaway process can occur involving mortality of grass, followed by decomposition which leads to further oxygen demand, which results in further dieoff. It is possible that large marine grazers like manatees and marine turtles may have kept turtlegrass meadows from ever becoming so dense that they were vulnerable to this process.

Mosquitos - Females - Specialized Mouth Parts

Females have specialized mouthparts for taking blood meals - The proboscis is like a hypodermic needle - Females can find animals by using palps to detect respired CO2 - Females take blood meals at dawn, dusk, during the night, or on cloudy days

Disease Vector and Pest Control

First priority: monitor! - Identify species present - Identify point sources - Evaluate effectiveness of control efforts Egg Surveys - Sampling eggs too labor-intensive for most species - Exception: ovitraps for monitoring Aedes albopictus, and A. aegypti in Florida

Fire Ecology in North America

First, just a brief history. Fire ecology is associated with humans and is a relatively recent phenomenon. North America used to be dominated by large grazers, and there is some indication that fire in the ecological record does not show up until just after the megafaunal collapse. The appearance of humans is closely associated with megafaunal collapse and with fire. One of the possible implications of all this is that with all those megaherbivores, most of the fine fuel needed for regular fires was hoovered up by the animals - after their disappearance there was much more left to burn.

18) Have fish evolved to be osmoconformers or osmoregulators in response to salinity stress? What about marine invertebrates like fiddler crabs?

Fish are osmoregulators, many marine invertebrates are oscmoconformers (like Uca), but are much more variable in their strategies than fishes.

7. Your agency assigns you the job of counting shorebirds in Florida Bay (southern terminus of the Florida Peninsula). The birds must be directly observed by telescope from boats - they cannot be seen from aircraft. The shorebirds typically roost and feed on the shallow flats and banks of the western bay (see Google Earth), which are only exposed when the tide is 0.1 ft or lower - and of course you can only see the birds during daylight hours. Based on your evaluation of the tides http://www.tides.net/florida/918/?year=2016&month=06 (note look at multiple months) and the weather, https://www.windfinder.com/windstatistics/northwest_florida_bay?fspot=flamingo pick a month and some dates within the month in the next year that you would schedule surveys. Given the water depths (http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/11451_01.shtml ) what kind of boat might you used to get there? Remember that the chart gives depths at MEAN LOW water...... and wind can have a big effect on tide. The distances are large and safety is a primary consideration. By the way, most of Florida Bay is within Everglades National Park, where airboats are not allowed.

Florida Bay is a system of basins that do not go dry at low tide, connected by cuts. The shorebirds are on the flats and can be seen from a boat. Since you cannot use an airboat, an outboard is probably fine since the cuts do not get less than about 1' deep even on the lowest tides. To maximize working time and exposure of flats, choose the winter and spring when eustatic sea level is lower and the flats are more often exposed. Pick full and new moon tides, and try to schedule on days with northeast winds when the wind driven tide would be lowest.

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 1. By what processes did Brazilian Pepper get established in the Hole in the Donut? What environmental changes initiated by humans favored this plant?

Fluffing of the soil caused an elevation change which allowed the pepper to outcompete the native plants. In addition the increase in phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural fertilizer also favored the pepper.

16) To conserve treefrog populations, what sizes and hydroperiods of wetlands should we focus on?

Generally smaller, and shorter hydroperiod. This is because most treefrog tadpoles are vulnerable to predation by fish and larger macroinvertebrates in longer hydroperiod wetlands.

21) What typically happens to fish communities in wetlands as you move from short to long hydroperiod?

Generally the fish community at short hydroperiods may be dominated by smaller species that are more omnivorous or herbivorous, whereas at longer hydroperiods the community becomes more dominated by large bodied predaceous fish species.

Stoma

Guard cells that shrink and swell to open and close the stomatal pore

Evapotranspiration

H20 transferred from soil or open water by evaporation + H20 removed from the soil by plant transpiration

Managing Hydrology - Eustronglyides ingots

Here is a specific example. This is not the Gambusia's guts, its Eustronglyides ignotus, a nematode worm This is a parasitic nematode, whose definitive host is piscivorous birds.

Managing Hydrology - Everglades Example

Here is an example from the Everglades. The only inlets are at G200A, and the only outlets at G203 - 206, all of which are on high ground. How does this constrain water management?

Managing Hydrology - Eustronglyides ingots - Life Cycle

Here is the life cycle. You can easily imagine that if you add more nutrients, you get more oligochaetes and fish, and more birds. With all that there is a greater chance of transmission of the parasite.

8. Your agency gives you the job of assessing small fish densities at sites along Clubbs Creek near Brunswick Georgia (find it in the rough middle of the chart at http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/11506.shtml . The fishes are only occupying the marsh itself at particularly high tides above 7', see gauge at Frederick River bridge (I did NOT choose it because of its name, really!) http://www.tides.net/georgia/972/?year=2016&month=03). Please pick a month and several promising dates to sample that would give you maximum sampling time per day. The wind can really help you here, so pick months and tides that would have the most favorable winds for keeping the tide high https://www.windfinder.com/windstatistics/saint_simons_sound?fspot=jekyll_island . Also, what sampling gear would you use for this study and why? The sampling sites are on the marsh surface at the edge of salt marsh creeks, so you don't have to traverse the marsh itself in a boat. What kind of boat would be the safest and most economical to get to the sites and why?

Here, the channels never go dry even on lowest tides, so an outboard is probably the boat of choice. Because you want extreme high tides, the late summer and early fall offer the highest eustatic sea level, and you would want to go on days with a northeast wind - when direction and Coriolis force cause oceanic water to pile up in the bays and salt marshes. Since these are small fishes in grassy vegetation and you are after densities, the only choice is going to be thow trap.

Oyster Reef Feedback Loops - Overharvest Relationship between Elevation and Suitability

High Relief: 25 - 45 cm above bottom Low Relief: 8 - 12 cm above bottom Work by Shulte et al. illustrates the discontinous nature of the relationship between elevation and suitability. By raising bars up with fill, they were able to move from a bar with poor density and abundance, to ones that had the densest and largest populations on the east coast. This despite the presence of multiple diseases - the oysters are able to outgrow the disease and reproduce before dying. Elevated bars became source populations; low relief bars were sinks.

Management Solutions - Sex Ratios in Mallards

Human landscape changes --> Higher nest predation --> Skewed sex ratios --> --> Predator control, Increase hunting pressure on males

Motor Boats - Displacement Hulls

Hydrostatic Lift = the phenomenon that allows boats to float because the hull displaces an equal mass in water volume as the craft and all its cargo weigh said to have displacement hulls. - Boats with displacement hulls move through the water by pushing the water aside and are designed to cut through the water with very little propulsion. Pro: - Smoother ride Con: - Slower speeds

Sampling Vegetation - Flight Validation

I then conducted several flights using a double-observer protocol in a small, fixed-winged aircraft to decide if a variety of wetland types were wet or dry from standardized distances and flight speeds.

Oyster Reef Restoration

I'd like to begin by saying that I am an ecologist interested in restoration, but am certainly not a malacologist, or aquaculturist and there are many things I do not know about oysters still. I am also not presenting original research - This talk is intended to give some background on what I think is a major and fascinating, rapidly developing science that is springing up spontaneously around the use of biological organisms to solve our coastal problems and build our future - its epicenter is definitely the southeastern U.S..

Everglades Restration - Unenriched Everglades

Unenriched Everglades freshwater ridge and slough

In what situations would you use eDNA to monitor an organism over more traditional survey methods? The answer depends also on the goals - what kinds of goals could not be satisfied with eDNA data?

If the goal is to detect presence of a species, this is a great technique. There must be conditions that allow for temporary survival of DNA, such as in water for this to work. eDNA cannot be used at present to infer anything quantitative about the numbers of individuals of species though.

Wetland Fire Ecology - Case Study: Everglades

In the Everglades, peat is formed by sawgrass, which grows in linear structures called strands, interspersed with tree islands that grow on higher elevation sites. During droughts, the peat on higher elevation strands may burn, sometimes deeply (0.5 - 1.0 meters), forming distinct depressions. Under the right conditions these depressions are colonized by willow, which then creates a nonpyrogenic community. Wading birds prefer to nest over alligators - because the alligators provide protection from raccoons and other nest predators - and so prefer tree islands that are flooded rather than elevated. These large linear features are few in number - only 3 - 5 in the entire Everglades, and thus are critical to the existence of the large wading bird population.

Chesapeake Bay - Restoring Forest Buffers

In the bay itself, shoreline is protected by 100 ft. buffer where development is off-limits!

Managing Light Geese - Solution

Increased season and bag limits "marginally" successful - Ducks Unlimited The solution so far has been to increase hunting mortality through increased daily bag limits. However, the hunters cannot keep up - numbers are rising exponentially. This is a management problem that is largely out of control - and like the prairie pothole situation, the issue is the interaction with agriculture

Everglades Restration - Kissimmee River RestorationExpectations

Indicators of Ecosystem Change - Plant communities - Water Quality - Geomorphology - Wading Bird studies - Invertebrate Studies - Herp studies - Fish Communities

Qi

Inflow Rate Qi = P + RO + SWi + GWi + Ai - precipitation - runoff

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 6. What happened to all the dirt?

It was piled up in huge mounds in situ.

Managing Hydrology - Deers vs. Wading Birds

Keep it Dry or Wet it Up? This is a pictorial about the projected effect of moving a lot more clean (of P) water to the Everglades, with inputs at the north end. Projections are for lots more wading birds - but fewer deer and some very angry deer hunt camp owners. Tradeoffs!

Managing Hydrology - Impoundment

Know head elevation, hydraulic head and tailwater elevation because these are key in your ability to control flow and volume of water leaving an impoundment.

Everglades Restoration - Key Structuring Function

Large Flows of Water

Waterfowl

Large bodied, webbed front toes, flattened bills Eat insects, plant material, tubers, shoots, fish. Precocial young - leave the nest immediately Thick down and waterproofing on feathers Heavily muscled, fast, strong fliers

Vector Control - Monitoring Mosquito Larvae

Larval Surveys Larvae collected from sites of interest with: - pint dippers - nets - aquatic light traps suction devices To determine: - presence/absence - effectiveness of larval reduction methods Standard pint dipper is a way to determine presence or absence of larvae in habitats of interest, though it doesn't work for species that don't need to come to the surface to get oxygen like Mansonia!!!

Mosquitos - Chemical Control Larvicides

Larvicides: - Immature stage control: Temephos * Affects central nervous system - Insect Growth Regulators (IGRs): methoprene * Breaks life cycle - Surface oils, monomolecular films * Reduces surface tension Adulticides applied via truck or aircraft Surface films - larvae and pupae cannot penetrate the film at the water surface to obtain atmospheric O2, and will drown due to a reduction in water surface tension, and subsequent wetting of snorkel and trumpets...

Waterfowl Diseases - Lead Poisoning

Lead Poisoning - Caused by ingestion of spent lead pellets in hunted areas - >3,000 tons lead deposited on wetlands each year - Takes several weeks to succumb - Not all poisoned birds die - Not usually reported - the unseen disease! - Louisiana - 67 - 75% of ducks had lead in crops - Estimated 2 - 3% of total duck population died each year - Use of steel shot mandatory in US in 1991 Other countries following..... Lead poisoning - historically a big problem because of lead in the sediments where ducks feed. Steel shot took 40 years to become legislation! Its still a big problem because of existing lead in feeding areas.

Understanding Lightning Behavior

Lightning has downward leads that connect to upwards leads, they connect and have a return stroke, surface ark, and side flashes.

Oyster Life Cycle

Like most bivalves, Eastern Oysters are broadcast spawners, meaning they release eggs and sperm into the water column. The larva or veliger stage is free swimming in about 6 hours, and can move up and down in the water column but otherwise at the mercy of currents. The larvae settle at 2 weeks - 3 months, and have some ability to select habitat. To some extent they are attracted to a waterborne pheromone released by adults, and by the proteins coating the shells of a typical reef. However, any port in a storm, and they will settle on old shoes, iron, concrete, and practically any other solid object including our salinity meters. This settlement stage is crucial - without hard substrate they will not settle, and without appropriate refugia, they will be eaten almost immediately by crabs, oyster drills and other predators. Crevices and cracks are it.

Chesapeake Bay - Air Pollution

Lots of nitrogen coming from cars emitting N_2O! picture = Chesapeake Bay airspeed

Managing Hydrology - Managing Stage to Generate Peat

Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge In Loxahatchee, the objective is to increase peat storage - because we know that historical elevations were higher due to longer hydroperiod. Managing the hydroperiod directly for this peat deposition is the main management guideline.

Mosquito Borne Diseases

Malaria (protozoan) - most devastating infectious diseases worldwide carried by Anopheles mosquitos West Nile (virus) Yellow Fever (virus) Zika (virus) Dengue (virus) - Aedes agyptei

Nest Predation - 3

Mammalian predators have become more abundant and increased in coverage during this century Humans have removed competitors and predators (Bobcats, wolves, coyotes). Agricultural and semiurban habitat provides abundant food for mesomammals the rest of the year.

Managing Hydrology - Stormwater Treatment Areas in the Everglades

Managing for reduction of P - where is all the P going? Mostly into the soil, but then where? And the potential for wildlife to move the P is very high, perhaps to the oligotrophic everglades where we do not want more P!

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 3. What is marl soil, and how is it created?

Marl is a whitish, extremely fine grained calcareous soil resulting from precipitation of calcium carbonate by some of the communities that make up periphyton.

Water Budget

Mass balance of water in a wetland "water budgets are used to estimate the change in the volume of water stored in a given area, from plot scale to landscape scale, and are balanced by inflows and outflows during a given period of time"

Wetland "Water Regime"

Measurement: H20 Level + Topography = Wetland Water Regime Models: Water Budget + Topography = Wetland Water Regime S/t = Qi - Qo

Wintering Waterfowl Management - Mississippi Alluvial Valley

Mississippi alluvial valley hosts a huge proportion of the ducks on the Mississippi flyway. Historically these birds fed on mast from trees as the Mississippi and its tributaries flooded into the surrounding floodplain. With levees that is no longer possible. The typical management technique mimics that however, through greentree reservoir management. Flood forest impoundments in the fall, maintain into the late winter. However, there is a big problem with keeping flooding too long, killing the trees. Hard to incentivize landowners to flood and release, flood and release - they are trying to get the most money for their impoundment...

Mosquitos - "A Magnificent Enemy"

Mosquitos can thrive nearly anywhere on earth! - Arctic tundra - 14,000 ft. elevation - Deserts

Nest Predation

Most species are ground-nesting Vulnerable to predation by mammals (skunks, foxes, coyotes, raccoons) - major cause of nesting failure and female death. Thick vegetation needed for successful nesting -increases search time for predators.

Boat Operator Training

Most states require a boat operator training and safety course Federal agencies require their own Boat operator certification course

Wetland Fire Ecology

Much less well studied than upland fire ecology Wetland conditions often conducive to fire - Open, good fire carrying capacity - In lightning prone areas - High biomass - Flammable vegetation common - Susceptible to drying by definition - Flammable soils mean long fire duration Wetland fires include below ground effects

Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreements

Multi-state restoration effort! 1) Reduce nutrient loading 2) Restore and rebuild oyster reefs 3) Restore wetlands and vital habitat 4) Manage and restore fisheries 5) Protect watersheds 6) Foster stewardship

Sampling Vegetation - Spectral Bands: Multispectral Imagery vs. Hyperspectral Imagery

Multispectral Imagery = Wavelengths that are broken up into only a few bands Hyperspectral Imagery = Wavelengths with many bands (picture)

Waterfowl in North America - Annual Cycle

Nearly all species breed at high latitudes - northern tier of states to Arctic circle. After breeding, migration to south, settle in a wintering area, depending on food and weather Successive migration to "staging areas" in spring, where fattening occurs. Breeding in areas with open water, cover, high concentrations of invertebrate prey.

Mosquitos as Pests

Negative effects on: - Tourism - Livestock production Swarms can cause exsanguination!

Nest Predation - 2

Nest cover has become less abundant due to farming practices Nesting success has declined markedly 1900 - 1930 60% 1966 - 1984 <20% Minimum 15% necessary to keep Mallard populations From declining.

Ducks - Breeding Ecology

Nests on ground or in trees Females incubate and care for young - possible because of precocial young. Large clutch sizes - 8 - 25 eggs. Eggs large, with high yolk content; mass of eggs can be more than mass of female! High nutritional constraints on females The biology of breeding drives management, and tells us that breeding is really dependent on a lot of invertebrate food being available.

Vector Control - Open Marsh Water Management

Newest strategy to reduce mosquitos - Began in the 1980s Gives fish predators access to mosquito larvae Ditching doesn't produce spoil areas Objective: create connectivity: - connect shallow, permanent ponds to tidal influence and other ponds - Three basic elements: ponds, ditches, sills - Properly designed and functioning OMWM systems result in 95-98% mosquito reduction Ponding and ditching technique Turn shallow depressions that are ephemeral into permanent ponds!!!!!! mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) picture = Hydraulic marsh cutting head

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 4. What is N limitation and how do you measure it?

Nitrogen limitation means the population or the parameter is stunted by too little N. It can be measured through spiking experiments, adding N until there is no further increment of growth or increase in population size.

Managing Hydrology - Competing Ecosystem Engineers

Now begins the battle to control water. There are a number of rodents working against you - beavers trying to stop flow, and muskrat burrows weakening dikes. Note that raising water levels on muskrats only makes them burrow further and further weakens the dike or dam at at time when it is most stressed by hydraulic head!

Hydroperiod Definition

Number of days per year (or percent time) surface water occurs at a given location

Major Stressors for Seagrass Meadows

Nutrient Loading --> Algal Blooms --> Light Reduction --> Death Scarring/Physical Disturbance --> Fragmentation --> Erosion Temperature/Oxygen/Salinity Stress --> Disease Overgrazing/Undergrazing --> Physiological Stress Expanding aquaculture Seagrasses are one of the most endangered marine habitat types worldwide, and like oysters, there are chains of causation, sometimes interacting, often producing negative feedback loops..

Managing Hydrology - Managing to Remove Nutrients

Objective - remove nutrients from surface waters A huge class of wetlands are now managed to remove nutrients. The is a cheap way compared to chemical means, and can result in a net increase in wetland area if they are constructed de novo for this purpose.

Managing Hydrology - Example Impoundment Scheme for Attracting Winter Ducks - Variation

Objective: Attract and hold waterfowl or shorebirds fall - spring Moist Soil Management = "let water do the work..." A slight variation on this is to keep the area moist but not flooded for spring and fall flights of shorebirds, which do not wade but prove in moist soil.

Managing Hydrology - Example Impoundment Scheme for Attracting Winter Ducks

Objective: Attraction of Waterfowl in fall and winter 1. Planting spring/summer 2. Flood late summer and fall 3. Waterfowl feed on seed heads, fallen grain, inverts Here is a typical impoundment management scheme for attracting winter ducks.

Managing Hydrology - Example - Managing and Improving Infrastructure in the Lake Okeechobee Basin

Objective: Dispersed water storage and regional nutrient source control Here is an example at larger scale - managing and improving infrastructure in the Lake Okeechobee basin - decisions to operate and build these impoundments and lease lands are all co-dependent!

Case Study: Okefenokee Swamp Fire Suppression, Water Control and Landscape of Fire

Okefenokee is a classic peat forming system, with catastrophic fires that occur during droughts. These fires burn into the peat, creating and maintaining depressions that turn into lakes and sloughs, creating deepwater habitat. Okefenokee fires are a source of conflict with surrounding pine plantations, which are not burned. The source of the Okefenokee fires is natural and their function maintains the swamp's features. However, an attempt was made in the late 1950s to raise the water level in the swamp by building a low dam or sill. This only turned out to affect 1% of the swamp, but it created deeper water that recreationists loved. Remember what I said about building control structures? People will always fight over it. The sill has largely been abandoned as a fire control structure but still serves to hold enough water back to affect local recreation. Although Okefenokee is still seen as a source of fire ignitions for the surrounding landscape, there are now attempts to use prescribed fire to damp their effect by reducing fuel buildup. Florida Forest Service has recently proposed a major restoration of longleaf pine as a barrier to fire outside the southern side of the swamp. Curious - one of the few places where we have true landscape fire contagion left in the southeast, and we are trying to block it...

Controlling Water - Maintenance, Liability, and Conflict

Once you decide to manage water, you are taking on responsibility and liability - both for controlling the water and for maintaining the infrastructure necessary to control it. Once you add riser boards, everyone will argue about how many should be in there! You need to become familiar with weather forecasts, disaster plans, and heavy equipment!

Managing Hydrology - Oysters

One result is that oysters are dying - done in by disease and predation that are more prevalent at higher salinities. Freshwater flow is critical to estuaries!

Belowground Burning

Organic soils ignite and burn slowly - days to years Novel additional structuring function - topography Long lasting effects - change in topography affects hydropattern Additional stressor for plants - Roots are susceptible Rapid, fundamental shifts in plant communities and biotypes Long term maintenance of wetlands Counter process to rapid biogenic soil accumulation "Due to a large wildfire in 2001, much of Mallory Swamp has unique open vistas of natural grassland with scattered pine and cypress trees"

Qo

Outflow Rate Qo = ET + SWo + GWo + Ao - Evapotranspiration

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Oyster Gardening

Oyster Gardening = Husbanding oysters for placement on restoration reefs

Oyster Reef Restoration Techniques - Oyster Mats

Oyster mats have been pioneered on the east coast of Florida by Dr. Linda Walters and The Nature Conservancy, where the primary problem was wave energy from boat wakes along the intracoastal waterway. Oyster mats are highly effective at attracting oysters, and do not sink into the mud. However, they do take a huge amount of time to construct - each oyster shell is typically cable tied to the central concrete ring. However if you have large numbers of volunteers this may be a positive option. This is the people power, crowdsourcing method.

85% loss of oyster reefs worldwide

Oyster reefs are now thought to be the most endangered marine habitat in the world. Gulf is one of the few places in the world with large areas of good to fair habitat, may be the last best place to conserve populations. This gives the southeast a special global relevance. By the way, this refers to oyster reefs - in Europe and the U.S. west coast and northeast, oyster aquaculture is thriving using native species. But wild populations are virtually gone, and the ecological functions of aquaculture are probably very different from reefs.

Oyster reefs as nutrient sequestration sites:

Oyster reefs as nutrient sequestration sites: - Restoration of all historical bars removes 48% of annual N&P inputs - Restoration of 23% of surface areas removes 100% of annual N&P The problem of excess nutrients can also be reversed by oysters themselves. They and their commensal organisms suck up a huge amount of water, and filter out a huge amount of nutrients - locking it up in shell or substrate. This example from the Choptank River in Maryland suggests that historic bars could remove half of the annual N and P - and this is in the context of extremely intensive agricultural operations with high runoff from the land.

Ecosystem Services Valuation of Oyster Reefs

Oyster reefs have long been noted for the range of effects they seem to have on the local environment and on the attendant communities. First, they create their own community, which is called an oyster reef - importantly not composed only of oysters. For humans, they serve as food, breakwaters, habitat for numerous fisheries,

Oyster Reefs

Oyster reefs tend to expand 90 degrees to the direction of predominant flow. This is strongly affected by existing topography - but you can see that these things can become major influences on flow and architecture of shallow waterways. These reefs are called "bioherms" by the geologists, and are recognized as major geological features in many coastal areas.

26) Name at least three different substrates that can be used for oyster reef restoration.

Oyster shell, crushed concrete, formed concrete (reef balls), limerock or other rock, Reefblks, recycled building materials, shell filled bags.

Oysters are Ecosystem Engineers

Oysters are truly fascinating beast. What other animals do you know that make landscape features you can see from space? What other creature is considered both an aphrodisiac and a navigational hazard? They affect commerce, navigation, culture and possibly religion in this area - setting the stage and providing habitat for wide variety of estuarine life, they are food, building material, aphrodisiac, fishery habitat and navigation hazard. They also are amazing filters, with rates of nearly 7 liters per hour, the ability to sequester mighty amounts of nutrients and entirely change water quality and demersal habitat in every estuary in the eastern U.S. Key fact - oysters create their own habitat - creating positive feedback loops (or negative!)

Oyster Reef Feedback Loops - Overharvest

Oysters illustrate a number of obvious feedback loops that present real problems for restoration. However, remember that if you can reverse the feedback loop, it becomes positive, which may be a key for restoration.

Are marine grazers necessary to avoid cycles of disease and density dependent mortality?

Patchiness may be good!

23) Describe the "ticking peat time bomb" and why it is such a challenge for wetland managers. Why is it getting worse?

Peat usually builds up in wetlands until it reaches the point at which the surface dries out too often and oxidizes. Under natural fire regimes, these "full" wetlands would burn out during dry periods. In a managed fire condition, it is impossible to burn out the wetlands because of smoke hazard and long burn times. What this means is that more and more wetlands are getting full of peat, creating a time bomb of fuel that could go off at any time.

Peridomestic Mosquitos

Peridomestic mosquitos = - Highly adapted to being around humans - A. aegypti has greatly reduced humming compared to other mosquito species!

Mosquitos - Important Population Sources for Management

Peridomestic mosquitos = - Highly adapted to being around humans - A. aegypti has greatly reduced humming compared to other mosquito species! Salt marsh mosquitos = - Huge infestations can follow rain after dry spells - Adults can migrate up to 40 miles - Estimated 420,000 acres of salt marsh in Florida Comfortable breeding in or near human development Ovitraps are often used for baseline surveillance for Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus surveillance because they are attracted to standing water

Everglades Restration - Picayune Strand - Completed

Picayune Strand Restoration will reestablish natural sheet flow to enhance wetlands and regulate freshwater inflow to the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge. - The Picayune Strand restoration project includes the construction of three pump stations with spreader canals, the plugging of 40 miles of canals and the removal of 227 miles of roads. - Levees will be installed, as required, to provide flood protection for adjacent private properties that would be impacted by the project. - Seven miles of Prairie Canal have been filled, 65 miles of roadways have been removed... ...and 17 culverts constructed resulting in 13,000 acres of restoration. - The project was transferred to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in June 2007 and its design of the Merritt Canal Stations is complete. - 98.5 percent, or 54,310 acres, of land needed to complete restoration has been acquired. - It's design of the Merritt Canal Stations is complete, construction scheduled for December 2009

30) What was the major restoration technique used in the Kissimmee River?

Placing dredged material back in the ditch.

Safe-to-Fail Plan

Plan accordingly for things that could go wrong Ex: Bring GPS, extra batteries, and a map

19) How are birds detected using the Conway protocol for estimating marsh birds?

Playbacks are used to elicit calls from marsh birds.

Prescribed Fire vs. Wildfire

Prescribed Fire: - Deliberate use of fire - Designed to mimic some effects of wildfire - Effects often muted, sometimes performed in nontypical seasons Know the terms backing, head and flanking fires, and know how to tell which is which!

Chesapeake Bay - Restoring Wetlands

Preserving wetlands is extremely important for: - Trapping sediment - Filtering out pollutants - Providing habitat

Productivity in Estuaries

Primary Productivity = Rate at which photosynthetic organisms are producing organic biomass Secondary Productivity = Rate of biomass production in consumer organisms

Seagrass Restoration - Prop Scars

Prop Scars = death by a thousand cuts

Propulsion - Propeller

Propeller: - most efficient - most common - Engine and propeller are below the bottom of the boat

29) What are the pros and cons of using continuous flooding as a mosquito control technique in coastal salt marshes?

Pros - is effective at keeping mosquitos from breeding by removing all moist soil. Cons - results in an impounded "dead zone" because of lack of oxygenation and mortality of nearly all vegetation.

Helicopters

Pros: - Access to almost anywhere - Get locations quickly - Great when access via ground is not feasible Cons: - Flight time $1000 per hour - Strict and limiting weight restrictions - Very strict safety protocols - More dangerous than fixed-wing - Motion sickness

Fixed-Wing Aircraft

Pros: - Conduct surveys must faster and cover more area than techniques via ground - Longer range and cheaper than helicopters - Many surveys and access to remote sites can be completed Cons: - Motion sickness - Strict weight limits - Flight time $200+ per hour - Requires an established runway

Canoes and Kayaks

Pros: - Easy to operate - Easy to transport - Cheap - Get into tight places no other boat can fit, and easily maneuver around obstacles Cons: - Limiting on what you can bring - Very slow transportation - Physically demanding - Calm water only

25) Name three ecological services provided by oyster reefs.

Protection from storm and wave action, nutrient sequestration in sediments, filtration of the water column, nursery habitat for commercially and recreationally harvested species, occasionally buffering of inshore salinities, entrapment of sediment, and oysters for harvest.

Managing Hydrology - Controlling Water

Pumps, Weirs, Gates, Trunks, Risers, Flap Gates - There are many ways to control water, ranging from blocking flow and maintaining water level (v notch weir and flashboard risers) to massive pumps that can move water uphill. Know some of the terminology here.

Managing Hydrology - Putting it all Together

Putting this all together, we know that the dominant controls on soil morphology and biogeochemistry, primary and secondary productivity, and community composition are driven by several features related to flooding - flow, hydroperiod, timing and depth of water. Thus flow and fire are two of the most important, and only controls we have when managing or restoring wetlands.

Water Cycle --> Water Budget

Qi - Qo inflow > outflow = water rises delta S = change in storage (volume) per change in time

Chesapeake Bay - The Dead Zone

Record dead zone in 2005. Among the first documented marine dead zones in the 1970s.

Vector Control - Rotational Impoundment Management

Reduces adverse affects of impoundment through hydrological reconnection to tides - allows transient fish species access to the marsh - continual flushing reduces stagnant water

Read the article by Smith et al. Restoration of Disturbed Lands: The Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration in the Everglades and answer the following questions: 2. What nutrient dynamics were changed as a result of the restoration activities, and how were they changed? Why did phosphorus concentrations decline with time after restoration?

Reduction of soil surface simply removed some of the phosphorus, but much of it also became locked up in recalcitrant forms.

The Tidal Squeeze - Oyster Restoration

Reefs have a characteristic profile for good ecological and physiological reasons. Oysters low in elevation are covered for most or all of the tide, and have the longest feeding times and growth rates. However, they also are exposed to organisms that cannot be exposed by tide - boring sponge, crabs and fishes, even sea turtles. Further, they may also be stressed by anoxia, and buryment in soft sediments. Abrasive action of sand can cause damage to young oysters and valves of older oysters. At the other end of the stick, on the high part of the reef oysters are exposed to much less predation pressure, but can only feed for part of the tide cycle. In addition they are exposed to dessication and thermal stress regularly. So you can live fast and die young and big, or you can live slow and safely and remain a runt. These forces are strong structuring functions that dictate the architecture and placement of reefs.

Sampling Vegetation - Large-Scale Hydrology Mapping

Regional wetland surface water model. (my research) - In order to test predictions about where telemetered Wood Storks move around the southeastern U.S., I decided that I needed to develop a regional, dynamic surface water model of wetland inundation patterns derived from remotely sensed imagery. - Because storks are strongly dependent on water-dwelling prey species, which often take several months to grow to appropriate size, water presence and duration of inundation (hydroperiod) are likely strong predictors for where storks might move. - Because the stork satellite telemetry data spanned 2004-2014, I was unable to use active sensors like SAR to detect surface water. - Consequently, I ended up using NASA passive sensors, freely available via USGS (MODIS and Landsat). - After testing numerous techniques to detect surface water with these sensors (e.g., band ratios, indexing, algorithms, daytime/nighttime temperature differentials, etc.), I concluded that the modified-Normalized Difference Wetness Index worked best to accurately classify water in wetlands. - I was able to set a threshold for wetness for each pixel, deciding if any given pixel was classified as 'wet' or 'dry'.

Managing Hydrology - Moving Water in Low Gradient Landscape

Remember that in a flat landscape, moving water is not straightforward. Manning's coefficient becomes very important as hydraulic head decreases, and the efficiency of discharge can be hugely affected by the shape of the channel. And the shape of the channel may be hugely complex (see bars in the river at top right).

2. Suppose you want to determine vegetation composition at 20 isolated wetlands approximately 300 m x 300 m in size. What are the tradeoffs of using remoted sensed data from MODIS to accomplish this task, versus going out to do hands-on vegetation surveys? What are the pros and cons of each technique, and which one would you choose?

Remote sensing pros - low manpower, relatively inexpensive, little field work. Cons - Modis does not have very high resolution compared to the size of each wetland, so grain size is inappropriate for this job. Hands on surveys - pros are that this is appropriately scaled to the wetlands, cons are that it will take a LOT of hours to do this and be very expensive.

Boat Safety Gear

Required by law: (varies by type and size of boat) - Personal Flotation Devices (PFD) for each person -Paddle -First aid kit -Bell/whistle - Visual distress signals - Fire extinguisher Things you should bring: - Tool kit - Anchor - Skills/knowledge in boat repair/diagnostic - Change of clothes - Rain gear - GPS (extra batteries) - Cell phone - Anchor - Food and water - Medications - Sunscreen -Bugspray

Waterfowl Diseases Botulism

Requires: - High pH, declining water levels - High water temperatures - low Oxygen - dead animal matter - 4 maggots enough! Outbreaks decline with cooler weather Rapid flooding Rapid cleanup of carcasses Botulism is typically transmitted by maggots, which are produced from carcasses and eaten in large numbers by ducks, thereby concentrating the toxin. The only solution is to rapidly clean up the carcasses and to dilute with flooding. Note crowding and high temperatures are both correlated - increasing issues with climate change.

Strategies for Regeneration Post-Fire

Resprout vs. Seedbank - Light intensity and frequent vs. infrequent and stand replacing Atlantic White Cedar is a tree that does not resprout after fire. Its seeds disperse and survive well in a fire environment, but their stands are very susceptible to catastrophic fire. Red maple, growing right next to it, takes a completely different approach - its root mass is large and the tree resprouts after fire. Both methods work well, but from a managers point of view, stand replacing fires are a very different tool from the resprouting.

3. How should major flows of water in the Everglades be changed in order to achieve hydrological restoration in the Everglades? How are two court orders holding that process up? Should they? Why or why not?

Water needs to be routed away from the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers and into the water conservation areas of the Everglades, resulting in increased flows to the coastal estuary. Two federal court orders require that the water be cleaned to 10ppb phosphorus before it can be released to the Everglades Protection Area. If the water quality standard is not maintained the Everglades will turn into a vast and unproductive cattail marsh which will be largely irreversible. While this is unacceptable, the process of cleaning the water is expensive and is taking a huge amount of time, resulting in further degradation of the Everglades in the meantime.

Waterfowl Management

Waterfowl is Big Business! - First wetland animal group recognized as having real dollar value - U.S. Govt cited waterfowl as "interstate commerce", allowing wetlands to be included in Clean Waters Act - Annual harvest of 16 - 20 million ducks and geese - Waterfowl hunting generated 4 - 7 billion in economic activity in 2011 - Waterfowlers were the first wetland conservationists in US. Ducks Unlimited

Motor Boats - Planing Hulls

When enough power is supplied, water lifts the boat upwards instead of being pushed out of the way by the hull. At a certain speed, the boat's hydrodynamic lift will exceed the hydrostatic lift and the vessel begins to plane across the water. - Operate like displacement hulls when at rest or at slow speeds - Can skim along at high speed - Limited only by power to weight ratio. - Flat-bottomed and V-bottomed hull shapes Pros: - Smooth ride - Faster cruising speed - Small wetted surface on plane - Best for rough conditions - Deep draft - stable working platform - High cargo capacity Cons: - Shallow draft - Rough ride - Wet ride - Poor performance in rough conditions

24) What is a likely downside for wildlife of using uniform ignition to quickly burn a wetland?

Wildlife may be able to escape an obvious front of fire by moving away. Uniform ignition with many small fires placed across the landscape creates an array of flame that makes no sense and is impossible to escape without running into another fire.

Weather Hazards

Wind: - Creates waves, size of waves are related to wind speed, depth of water and size of water body - Wind driven tides Fog: - Slow down, use fog lights

Wintering Ducks - waterfowl management

Wintering ducks eat 75 - 90% seeds This involved knowing the energetic value of your cover crop.

Does Predator Control Work? (Waterfowl)

Yes! 60% more ducklings produced in Minnesota Increases to 82% nest success for Brant 37% increase in nest success for Mallards But the cost is high - over $2.00 per duckling

Does fire strongly determine plant community?

Yes, Fire strongly determines plant community. Last week we talked about hydrological effects on vegetative and animal communities. This week we will talk about the fire side of this graph. First, I'll talk about fire ecology generally, in part because much of terrestrial fire ecology applies to wetland fire ecology. Also, wetland fire ecology has been much less well studied.

Sampling Vegetation - Index of Biological Integrity in relation to disturbance

also involves dominance

Chesapeake Bay - Population growth leads to more urban run-off

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/chesapeake_bay.pdf?docID=..

Chesapeake Bay - Over-Exploitation Led to Loss of Ecosystem Benefits

https://estuarychesapeake.wordpress.com/tag/oysters-2/

20) Define the following: c. Estuarine

mixing of fresh and salt water, usually coastal and tidal

20) Define the following: b. Palustrine

nontidal, freshwater, non flowing water

20) Define the following: a. Lacustrine

on or adjacent to a lake, usually with inlet and outlet.

Chesapeake Bay - The Problem: Nutrient Over-Loading

picture --> Eutrophication Massive algal bloom: Potomac river

Chesapeake Bay - The Problem: Nutrient Over-Loading (Eutrophication)

picture = Massive algal bloom: Potomac river

Everglades Restoration - d

repeated for biomass (log g/m2)

Aircraft Requirements:

• Flying with a federal agency o If flying in a helicopter or below 500ft in an fixed wing aircraft, flight suits, leather boots, gloves and helmets are required. o Above 500ft long pants, close toed shoes and all natural fibers must be worn o Classroom flight safety training must be completed, and if flying over water, a water ditching course is also required