View Abstracts

Across the Mississippi Gulf Coast, hardened infrastructure (e.g., bulkheads, seawalls) is the dominant method of shoreline stabilization among private properties. In recent years, living shorelines have become an increasingly popular alternative; however, formal economic analyses of small-scale gree...

Few studies have examined the fate of dredge spoil placed along river corridors from a geomorphic and retrospective perspective. Such studies can provide guidance to rivers currently being dredged. The Apalachicola River in Florida was dredged from the 1950s for several decades, with disposal on the...

The Sea-Level Rise in the Classroom curriculum enhances scientific, environmental, and civics literacy of high school students through four modules on understanding and addressing sea-level rise impacts. Students that understand the risks and are prepared to undertake potential solutions generate an...

Human impacts on coastal marshes are considerable, with 1-2% of coastal marshes lost per year leading to subsequent losses in ecosystem services like nutrient filtering and carbon sequestration. Currently, marsh construction is being used to mitigate losses of marsh cover and services resulting from...

The state of Alabama has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on shoreline restoration projects, with one goal being to enhance shoreline habitats for fisheries species. For example, $3 million was spent in 2010 to rebuild Little Bay Peninsula and shelter Little Bay in Mississippi Sound. Despite th...

Research on the fate and uptake of plastic pollutants in tidal marsh ecosystems is sparse. In an attempt to quantify microplastic prevalence in tidal marsh ecosystems along the coast of Mississippi, we sampled marsh sediments and resident tidal marsh bird stomach contents within three marsh complexe...

Many mollusks alter their shell morphology in response to predator exudates or injured conspecifics to lower their predation risk. However, studies have yet to examine whether this predator-avoidance response can be applied under aquaculture scenarios to improve fisheries. We tested whether exposure...

Mortality investigation for bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) stranded on the Alabama coast increased from 2010 to 2014 during the northern Gulf of Mexico unusual mortality event (UME) associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWHOS). Cause of death (COD) patterns since that event have...

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Current, accurate land cover and change information is a common foundational data set that can be used to address a wide range of management issues, from flooding risk and natural infrastructure to policy evaluation and land use planning. Detailed information related to impervious...

The massive disruptions to the oyster industry caused by the Covid-19 pandemic creates an opportunity to rethink how oyster habitat can be restored and created. Oyster reef restoration and enhancement projects have focused on replacing or supplementing cultch material in the hopes of gaining a natur...

There is an overwhelming consensus among conservation experts that an efficient, data-driven, science-based geospatial conservation prioritization tool can help guide or optimize the dollars spent on land conservation. In this work, we developed and implemented a conservation prioritization framewor...

Commercial fishing is a culturally and economically important industry in coastal regions across the United States. During the past 30 years, the average age of commercial fishermen has increased substantially. This trend is commonly referred to as the “greying of the fleet” and is attributed to...

For coastal communities, climate change is making flood and stormwater management increasingly complex, as heavy rainfall runoff, inland flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise is proving to be a game changer. NOAA’s Water Initiative is working to meet these challenges by transforming how NOAA d...

Blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, support valuable commercial fisheries throughout much of their range, including the Gulf of Mexico. Over the last five years (2015–2019), Gulf-wide annual commercial landings averaged 51 million pounds for an annual dockside value of over $70 million. Despite activ...

In spring and summer of 2019, the two openings of the Bonnet Carré Spillway represented an unprecedented change from natural modes of variability to an engineered diversion in a coastal system. The abundance of river discharge diverted by this event has an unknown potential for impacts on water qua...

Gulf of Mexico coastal wetlands support millions of migratory birds annually. However, between 2004 and 2009, Gulf states have experienced 71% of the total decline of coastal wetlands within the conterminous United States with Louisiana accounting for most of this loss. Marsh terracing is one method...

The Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) Management Conference consists of five constituent committees: Community Action Committee, Community Resources Committee, Government Networks Committee, Business Resources Committee, and Project Implementation Committee. A Science Advisory Committee (S...

Dissolved oxygen (DO) is often used as a water quality indicator and proxy for ecosystem health. Organic matter is remineralized in sediments by microbial and macrofaunal communities that consume DO in the process. DO consumption rate depends on the DO concentration of the overlying water but can al...

Ecosystem restoration has been globally recognized as a key component of conservation programs and is considered essential to the long-term sustainability of many ecosystems. However, little information exists on the impacts these ecologically-based land management activities have on environmental q...

Sea-level rise (SLR) is negatively impacting coastal infrastructure such as reducing the effectiveness of stormwater systems, jeopardizing key aspects of fresh and wastewater systems, and flooding roads more frequently. Adapting to these challenges can take on a variety of formats depending on the s...

In the past decade, the boom of large scale spatial products enrich conservation experts with more resources and data to make smarter and more comprehensive land conservation decisions on large study areas. Web application, as one of the most accessible methods to share data across a large audience,...

In the United States and around the world, the security of critical water resources is at risk. Too much water, too little water, or water of poor quality endangers life, property, economies, and ecosystems. These threats to water security arise from several factors, including increased water demand...

Africatown, located in Mobile, Alabama, represents a community settled by captives brought to the United States from Africa by slave ship Clotilda, known as the last slave ship to arrive in the USA. Africatown is unique in that it represents a group of Africans who were forcefully removed from their...

Longevity of coastal salt marshes is inevitably controlled by the imbalance of processes driving vertical elevation change (e.g., organic and inorganic sediment accumulation) and spatial extent (e.g., shoreline erosion, upland migration). Short-term (days to years) observations and measurements of v...

Marsh terracing is a coastal restoration technique that can dissipate wind driven waves, reduce fetch, and potentially reduce erosion from adjacent marsh platform in the northern Gulf of Mexico. This technique consists of constructing segmented berms of bare soil from sediment excavated within shall...

Coastal wetlands provide numerous ecosystem services including improved water quality, valuable habitat for fish and wildlife, and shoreline protection. However, their resilience is largely a function of various environmental stressors which can reduce elevation and result in loss of coastal habitat...

In 2017, 25% of all US counties received at least one major presidential disaster declaration. In 2020, this trend continues with devastating wildfires, stronger hurricanes, extreme flooding, intense tornadoes, and other natural disasters. Since 2004, Santa Rosa County (SRC) has been included in 13 ...

Many metal ions are known to have severe health and environmental impacts, particularly in aqueous environments. Therefore, we have investigated the detection of divalent metal cations in water using array sensing techniques. Array sensing, also known as chemical fingerprinting or pattern recognitio...

Ghost fishing is a term used to describe abandoned and lost fishing gear that catches marine life. One common type of derelict fishing gear in Mississippi Sound are Blue Crab traps. Derelict crab traps are the result of a combination of factors, but not limited to frequent storms, boat traffic, vand...

Changes in construction methods are improving the durability of our homes in the face of severe weather. Nearly 20,000 homeowners in 17 states have used the nationally recognized FORTIFIED Home™ resilient construction standard to strengthen their homes and reduce the cost of ownership. FORTIFIED H...