Research investigation into the Ventura River watershed: Geoliteracy, stormwater, and community activity

Presently, scientific communities are confronting Earth’s foremost environmental issues using best management practices. However, an increase for need in the synthesis of socio-ecological principles using a multi- and trans-disciplinary approach is required for solutions that benefit both nature and humans. To examine whether a community perceives stormwater runoff as both a local resource and threat to coastal water quality, an online survey of the Ventura River watershed community probed local residents’ understanding of watershed knowledge, beliefs, and behavior with regards to their local environment as it pertained to water resources, especially as affected by human activity. Analysis of 144 participants’ responses and their self-reported water activity, water activity frequency, and perceptions of Ventura River’s discharge and stormwater runoff reveals the community’s behavior regarding exposure to poor water quality in a local coastal environment and, ultimately, the survey participants’ level of geoliteracy concerning their local watershed. A statistical analysis between categorical variables of the survey questions examines relationships between self-reported waterborne illness symptoms and the water activities that participants enjoy regularly and/or perform for work. The survey responses demonstrated common themes in water knowledge that exist throughout this particular coastal community. Additionally, through the use of an optical and historical classification system, the Ventura River’s sediment discharge was examined both remotely and in situ. Multispectral ocean color satellite sensors have been useful in monitoring the water quality of Case 2 waters. Particularly, after severe storm events contaminants can be carried along with storm runoff from urban storm drains and Mediterranean river mouths which then enter coastal and recreationally trafficked water. Earth scientists have observed poor water quality occurring offshore in Case 2 waters near major river mouths and urban areas causing the coastal water column to deteriorate in quality

Science-based restoration monitoring of coastal habitats, Volume Two: Tools for monitoring coastal habitats

Healthy coastal habitats are not only important ecologically; they also support healthy coastal communities and improve the quality of people’s lives. Despite their many benefits and values, coastal habitats have been systematically modified, degraded, and destroyed throughout the United States and its protectorates beginning with European colonization in the 1600’s (Dahl 1990). As a result, many coastal habitats around the United States are in desperate need of restoration. The monitoring of restoration projects, the focus of this document, is necessary to ensure that restoration efforts are successful, to further the science, and to increase the efficiency of future restoration efforts

Ecosystem Transitions And State Changes Rapidly Alter The Coastal Carbon Landscape: Evidence From The Chesapeake Bay Region

The coastal landscape is a naturally shifting mosaic of distinct ecosystems that are rapidly migrating with climate change. While directional changes in climate, such as warming and sea level rise, are fundamentally reorganizing the coastal landscape, ecosystem function, especially carbon storage, is affected to an unknown degree. This dissertation presents four chapters that examine the role of ecosystem transitions in coastal carbon dynamics across a range of spatial scales – within individual ecosystems, between two ecosystems, and at the landscape between an array of ecosystems. Ghost forests, or the marsh-forest ecotone, serves as an ideal example of a migratory ecotone. As sea levels rise, terrestrial forests die-off from salt water intrusion and are replaced by salt-tolerant marsh species. While this transition is widely seen and studied, we present the first field study that quantifies carbon loss during this transition (Chapter 1). Significantly, we find that the loss of carbon during marsh migration can be replaced by the accumulating marsh soils, but the timescale for this replacement is at the scale of centuries. Warming, a co-occurring climate stressor, is expected to affect carbon storage to an unknown degree as it affects both antagonistic properties to soil carbon storage: production and decomposition. In a whole-ecosystem soil warming experiment, we find that moderate amounts of warming consistently maximized root growth, marsh elevation gain, and belowground carbon accumulation (Chapter 2). However, our work indicates nonpermanent benefits as global temperatures continue to rise and elevated temperatures exacerbate marsh elevation and carbon loss. At the landscape scale, we see that while climate change can drastically reduce or increase the extent of coastal habitats, compensatory mechanisms largely maintain individual ecosystem extents (Chapter 3). However, coastal squeeze in some environments still reduce extents of ecosystem critical to regional carbon storage. Blue carbon habitats that comprise the coastal zone are able to compensate this loss in less time than it takes to accrue that loss. These findings reveal unique functional compensatory mechanisms at the landscape scale that quickly absorb carbon losses and could facilitate increased regional carbon storage in the face of accelerating climate change. Finally, we concentrate on ecosystem vulnerability of salt marshes, an ecosystem with a critical role in global and local carbon dynamics. By leveraging decadal SET data, we are able to identify early warning signals of marsh collapse in the changing microtopography of the marsh surface (Chapter 4). Increasing microtopographic heterogeneity in degrading salt marshes mirrored trends in a diverse array of systems with alternative stable states – indicating that early warning signals of marsh drowning and ecosystem transition are observable at small-spatial scales prior to runaway ecosystem degradation. Congruence between traditional and novel metrics of marsh vulnerability indicate that microtopographic metrics can be easily applied to existing SET records to identify hidden vulnerability before widespread marsh degradation