HR: 09:45h
AN: H51K-08    [Abstracts]
TI: FerryMon: Using ferries as hydrochemical observatories in estuarine and coastal waters
AU: * Paerl, H
EM: hpaerl@email.unc.edu
AF: UNC-CH Instit. Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557, United States
AU: Guajardo, R
EM: rodneyg@unc.edu
AF: UNC-CH Instit. Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557, United States
AU: Peierls, B
EM: peierls@email.unc.edu
AF: UNC-CH Instit. Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557, United States
AU: Rossignol, K
EM: rossign@email.unc.edu
AF: UNC-CH Instit. Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557, United States
AU: Braddy, J
EM: jbraddy@email.unc.edu
AF: UNC-CH Instit. Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557, United States
AB: Estuaries are among the most productive and resourceful aquatic ecosystems on Earth. They are strongly influenced by hydrochemical stressors, including nutrient enrichment and climatic factors such as droughts, storms and floods. Clarifying how estuaries respond to these stresses will provide an understanding of how hydrologic and chemical processes control ecological condition and change of these ecosystems. This understanding will greatly benefit from a spatially and temporally-intensive observational program, which, when coupled to modeling will help predict future responses to external anthropogenic (nutrient) and climatic (hydrologic) perturbations. North Carolina's Pamlico Sound System (PSS) is the Nation's second largest estuary. It exemplifies the impacts of human development (eutrophication) and large climatic perturbations (hurricanes). We are using 3 NC DOT ferries to conduct unattended hydrochemical monitoring of water quality, habitat and ecological condition of the PSS. This program, FerryMon (www.ferrymon.org), uses temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and chlorophyll a sensors coupled to discrete sampling of nutrients, organics, photopigment and molecular indicators to assess water quality in a near real-time manner over a range of relevant physical, chemical and biological time scales. An autonomous vertical profiler (AVP), equipped with sensors similar to those on the ferries, provides complementary vertical profile data. This capability is timely given unprecedented human development and a period of elevated tropical storm and hurricane activity affecting coastal water quality and habitat conditions and fisheries resources. FerryMon is used to calibrate remotely sensed indicators of water quality (photopigments, turbidity), facilitating scaling up to the ecosystem level. It is integrated with complementary observational programs (LTERs, NEON, ORION, WATERS, SEACOOS), and it supports interdisciplinary research aimed at identifying and quantifying anthropogenic and climatic drivers of ecological change in large water bodies that are difficult to monitor and assess using conventional monitoring programs.
UR: http://www.ferrymon.org
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1807 Climate impacts
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
DE: 1834 Human impacts
DE: 1871 Surface water quality
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting