RAPID: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Mechanisms of seagrass community injury and resilience post Hurricane Florence: implications for increasingly stormy coasts

快速：合作研究：佛罗伦萨飓风后海草群落损伤和恢复力的机制：对日益暴风雨海岸的影响

• 批准号: 1906635
• 负责人: Jessie Jarvis
• 金额: $ 9万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Wilmington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-02-01 至 2021-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1906635&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; Mechanisms; seagrass

Seagrass meadows are conspicuous features of many estuarine and nearshore environments. By some estimates, these meadows contribute an average of $20,000 per hectare per year in goods and services. These include nutrient cycling, sediment stabilization, carbon burial, and provision of nursery habitat for juvenile fishes, crabs, and shrimps. Alarmingly, seagrasses are threatened by several environmental and human-driven stressors, and loss of seagrass habitat remains a key concern for conservation and sustainable development programs. Anticipated increases in storminess (frequency and intensity) and rainfall under many climate change modeling scenarios make understanding hurricane impacts on valuable coastal habitats such as seagrass meadows important on local, national, and global scales. Indeed, seagrass meadows potentially serve as a 'canary in the coal mine' regarding the effects of increased hurricane activity as they are found at shallow depths and are affected by turbidity and salinity; seagrasses are also vulnerable to burial or erosion due to large storms. Seagrasses (1) include a suite of species with distinct growth and reproductive strategies; (2) live in a range of meadow sizes and degrees of 'patchiness;' and (3) present divergent seasonal cycles. This represents a tremendous opportunity to explore the conditions and attributes that result in seagrass resilience or vulnerability to hurricanes as a model for coastal ecosystem responses more broadly. Hurricane Florence made landfall along the NC coast on September 14, 2018. Florence stalled approaching shore, and storm-related winds/rains persisted for 4 days (13th-16th) in southeastern NC. Subsequently, record high sea-level stands (surge + tide) were observed across the NC coastline. Furthermore, Florence became the second wettest US storm, behind only Harvey in 2017, dumping 65 trillion L of rain over land that depressed estuarine salinities for over a month. NC seagrasses are dominated by three species: eelgrass, shoalgrass, and widgeon grass. Meadows exist as polycultures or monocultures, and exhibit a diverse range of spatial configurations. Meadows are also defined by strong seasonality: eelgrass shoots senesce in summer due to heat stress, with sites transformed either into shoalgrass-dominated meadows or mudflats. Subsequent to dieback, eelgrass depends upon a combination of seedbank and surviving apical meristems for regeneration each winter. Using key seagrass datasets collected by the research team dating back decades across ~40 Florence-impacted meadows, several fundamental ecological questions are being addressed: (1) how sexual (eelgrass: seedbank) v. asexual (shoalgrass: vegetative growth and fragment colonization) life histories promote susceptibility or resilience of seagrass to disturbance; (2) how meadow landscape configuration and plant diversity modulate the effect of storms on seedbank retention; (3) how meadow disturbance (intense physical v. more chronic physiochemical drivers) affected community dynamics, with special focus on plant productivity and the critical 'nursery role' of seagrass habitat; and (4) how seasonality and species traits amplify or attenuate the effects of intense disturbance on seagrasses. This research expands upon previous post-hurricane studies by considering the interactive effects of hurricanes, landscape configuration, and biodiversity on ecosystem responses. It also leverages ongoing, NSF-supported work along the TX coast to compare-and-contrast the responses of different seagrass phenology/growth strategies to storm disturbance (e.g., turtlegrass in TX is a "leaf-on" species throughout the year while eelgrass and shoalgrass in NC both exhibit strong seasonality in biomass). Collectively, this work will result in more generalizable models of coastal ecological resilience to storminess.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

海草草地是许多河口和近岸环境的显着特征。据一些估计，这些草地平均每年的商品和服务贡献为20,000美元。这些包括营养循环，沉积物稳定，埋葬碳以及为少年鱼类，螃蟹和虾提供苗圃栖息地。令人震惊的是，海草受到几种环境和人类驱动的压力源的威胁，而海草栖息地的丧失仍然是保护和可持续发展计划的关键关注点。预计在许多气候变化建模场景下，风暴感（频率和强度）和降雨的预期增加，使人们了解飓风对诸如海草草地等有价值的沿海栖息地的影响，例如对本地，国家和全球范围重要的重要性。确实，海草草地有可能充当“煤矿中的金丝雀”，涉及在浅水深处发现飓风活动的影响并受到浊度和盐度的影响；海草也容易受到大风暴造成的埋葬或侵蚀的攻击。海草（1）包括一套具有独特生长和生殖策略的物种； （2）生活在各种草地尺寸和“斑点”程度； （3）目前的季节性周期。这是一个巨大的机会，可以探索导致海草弹性或飓风脆弱性，作为沿海生态系统反应的模型的脆弱性。 佛罗伦萨飓风于2018年9月14日沿着北卡罗来纳州海岸登陆。佛罗伦萨停滞了岸上，北卡罗来纳州东南部与风暴有关的风/雨持续了4天（13-16）。随后，在NC海岸线上观察到了记录的高海平面林分（潮汐 +潮汐）。此外，佛罗伦萨成为美国第二最潮湿的风暴，在2017年仅次于哈维，在一个多个月以来抑郁的河口盐分降低了65万亿升的降雨。 NC海草主要由三种物种支配：鳗草，浅草和Widgeon草。草地作为多养殖或单一培养存在，并表现出各种空间构型。草地也由强烈的季节性来定义：由于热应激，鳗鱼草在夏季射击鼻子，地点变成了以浅草为主的草地或泥浆的变化。在死亡之后，鳗草依赖于每年冬天再生的种子库和幸存的顶端分生组织的结合。 使用研究团队收集的关键海草数据集可追溯到约40个佛罗伦萨影响的草地上的数十年，正在解决几个基本的生态问题：（1）性（1）性（eelgrass：seedbank：seedbank）v。无性诉（shoalgrass：shoalgrass：shoalgrass：营养成长和碎片殖民化）的生活历史悠久的生活历史促进了易于或韧性。 （2）草地景观构型和植物多样性如何调节暴风雨对种子银行保留的影响； （3）草甸紊乱（强烈的物理诉更慢性的物理化学驱动力）如何影响社区动态，特别关注植物生产力和海草栖息地的关键“苗圃角色”； （4）季节性和物种特征如何扩大或减轻强烈干扰对海草的影响。这项研究通过考虑飓风，景观构造和生物多样性对生态系统反应的互动影响，扩大了以前的Hurricane研究。它还利用了沿TX海岸的NSF支持的工作，以比较不同海草物候/生长策略对暴风雨干扰的反应（例如，TX中的海龟是一年中的“叶子”物种，而NC中的eelgrass and Shoalgrass在NC中均表现出强烈的季节。总的来说，这项工作将导致更具普遍的沿海生态弹性模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准来评估值得支持的。