A. Progress Toward Overall Goals
The Risk Assessment/Socioeconomic Analysis and Education/Community Outreach components are scheduled to begin in FY97. Therefore the FY96 Annual Report refers only to the predecessor of the planned Environmental Research and Modeling component- i.e., the NOAA Florida Bay program. That program developed as an integral component of an overall Interagency Florida Bay Science program and within the constraints and structures of that Interagency program at the direction of a NOAA Florida Bay Task Force chaired by the director of NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program. According to the agreed upon Interagency framework, agency research activities must not only be consistent with the scientific approach and priorities of the Interagency Science Plan but also individual agency implementation plans or proposed research activities must be reviewed through the Interagency Program Management process. This was felt to be essential not only to minimize waste but also to permit sufficient flexibility in funding redirection by collaborating agencies. The intention is that individual agency activities be complementary rather than comprehensive, that in aggregate (rather than individually) their efforts will yield answers to the basic questions posed and furnish timely information to restoration managers. Although NOAA has become the largest supporter of Florida Bay restoration science research, at present the NOAA Florida Bay program represents less than a third of the ca. $6M annually spent by the Interagency program. These obligations and relationships were fully described in the NOAA Florida Bay Program FY95 and FY 96 Implementation Plans signed and approved by the Assistant Administrators of OAR, NMFS and NOS and the Director of the Coastal Ocean Program.
The research objectives of the Interagency Florida Bay Science Program were and are as follows:
The "customers" of the
research funded and/or conducted by the interagency partners (including
NOAA) are the Interagency Florida Bay Working Group and the South Florida
Ecosystem Task Force Management Working Group. NOAA's institutional
expertise and its specific environmental mandates (preserving the FKNMS
and protecting living resources including endangered species) have
delimited NOAA's contribution to the Florida Bay Interagency program and
guided the substantive content of the FY96 Implementation Plan.
Specifically, NOAA was asked by its agency partners (DOD/COE,
DOI/ENP, DOI/NBS, EPA, FlaDEP, SFWMD) to focus its research effort upon
the larger oceanographic, atmospheric, geological and fisheries context
within which Bay restoration will proceed. This implied that most NOAA
resources were to be directed towards studying the Bay ecosystem's
interaction with and significance to the adjacent Atlantic and Gulf of
Mexico coastal marine ecosystems and its regulation by the larger scale
oceanic and meteorological processes that so intimately link the coastal
marine to the coastal terrestrial systems in South Florida.
Upon approval of the FY95 Plan and with the guidance of its own standing Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), the NOAA Florida Bay Program Management Committee (PMC ) selected for funding a diverse set of research projects based on a formalized peer-review competitive process including issuance of an RFP (given in full as an appendix to the FY95 Implementation Plan), submission of planning letters, submission of detailed work plans and eventual issuance of awards at levels agreed upon by the Coastal Ocean Program. A list of the individual projects and the funds that were awarded each in their second year (FY96) is given in Appendix 1. It is important to note that all the specific projects in the NOAA Program were reviewed by and approved by the Interagency "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee. Some of the FY95 projects represented extensions of projects initiated less formally and at a lower level in FY94 while others were entirely new starts.
Representatives of nearly all of the projects funded through the Interagency process, including most of the NOAA Program principal investigators, presented their initial results at the First Florida Bay Science Conference (FFBSC) which was attended by the Interagency Florida Bay Science Review Panel. The Review Panel was given no programmatic information whatsoever and the separate efforts of the various agencies were not distinguished, but they did provide comments not only upon many of the individual scientific projects as well as upon the "success" of the evolving Interagency collaborative process. Without question there is no precedent for such extensive interagency state and federal cooperation in funding an conducting a unified research enterprise. It represents an experiment in progress. We were however, much gratified that many of the NOAA projects were specifically identified as both of high overall priority and of high technical merit. We were also pleased that the Panel specifically suggested that the other agencies should follow the lead of NOAA and "commit to external peer review of individual proposals". [See Report of the Florida Bay Science Review Panel on Florida Bay Science Conference: A Report by Principal Investigators, October 17 &;18, 1995 by D.F. Boesch, N.E. Armstrong, J.E. Cloern, L.A. Deegan, R.D. Perkins and S.L. Williams]. The Panel's comments formed the primary basis for the FY96 NOAA Florida Bay Implementation Plan.
B. FY96
Scientific Accomplishments
Appendix 1 contains a list of the principal investigators for each
project, the participating institutions, the funding for each project,
the sources of funding for the NOAA Florida Bay Program and the separate
allocation of COP funds to academic institutions and NOAA line
organizations. Detailed individual project descriptions and work plans
can be obtained upon request from the NOAA Florida Bay PMC. Highlights of
what the individual projects have accomplished to date are briefly
summarized below with a more complete report for each project given in Appendix 3 . In overview NOAA's
Florida Bay Program has had three overall objectives: improving our
physical understanding of Florida Bay (three projects); characterizing
the Bay ecosystem and recent changes (five projects); and two projects
that address anthropogenic pollution.
Improving our physical understanding and/or modeling of Florida Bay's interconnection and dependence upon regional oceanographic and meteorological processes are the general goals of the following projects. They represent the NOAA contribution to a larger Interagency effort attempting to develop, initialize and run in operational mode a Florida Bay Circulation model, which is in turn part of the still larger effort to develop, initialize and run in operational mode a coupled oceanographic, hydrological and atmospheric model of the South Florida peninsula to provide requisite inputs to coastal water quality and ecological models.
1) "Regional Boundary Conditions for Florida Bay"
This project was initiated in the summer of 1995 with a goal of providing accurate physical (water levels, currents, temperature and salinity) boundary condition information to modelers and investigators working in the South Florida region and in Florida Bay. The total water level is probably the single most important parameter for any hydrodynamic modeling effort in Florida Bay, thus this project is initially focusing on providing such, coordinating as closely as possible with the Corps of Engineers modeling effort for Florida Bay. To this end the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) is being applied to the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean (GOM) region to provide this information, based on atmospheric and tidal forcing of a barotropic (two-dimensional; vertically integrated) version of the POM. The model bathymetry has been established (a GOM and two subdomains) and tidal simulations, based on open ocean tidal boundary conditions, compare well with previous model results. Moreover, three different gridded wind fields for different simulation periods have been prepared and purely wind-driven simulations of the GOM, SF and TL domains are underway. The observed coastal water level gauge data has been assembled at stations around the GOM domain for these time periods and will be used to evaluate the model results.
2) "Reconstruction and Simulation of Episodic Meteorological Events and Local Weather Regimes which affect the South Florida Ecosystem"
This project was initiated in FY94 with two principal objectives: mesoscale atmospheric modeling and episodic meteorological event reconstruction. The former is critical to wind forcing of the Bay circulation model as well as rainfall inputs to south Florida and the Bay while the latter was deemed critical to understanding the south Florida ecosystem which can be strongly influenced by episodic storms and/or hurricanes, as noted by the Panel. A high-resolution version of the Advance Regional Prediction System (ARPS) model has been extended to actually predict the amount and the distribution of rainfall, not just moisture convergence and the locations of dry convective cells, as well as replication of realistic looking precipitation patterns along the sea breeze front. Moreover, ARPS has recently been enhanced to also predict the planetary boundary layer (PBL) height as a function of time and stability. Work in progress for initializing ARPS from real-time operational model history files and initializing ARPS from a realistic 3-D heterogeneous atmospheric state should substantially improve the realism of the atmospheric simulations. Given this, the generation of high-resolution simulations of rainfall and surface winds, and their application as tactical decision aids (TDAs) in Everglades restoration management, would be a near-term possibility.
3) "Florida Bay
circulation and exchange study"
An observational study of
the interaction and exchange of Florida Bay with the connecting coastal
waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic in the Florida Keys, this
project was initiated in August 1995. Field work began December 1995 and
consists of a combination of synoptic shipboard surveys, in-situ
moorings and Lagrangian surface drifters to describe and quantify the
circulation within the Bay as related to local forcing and coupling with
the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf. Field work includes five seasonal
hydrographic surveys of Florida Bay and the surrounding waters, in
conjunction with both a time series (since Dec. 1995) of CTD and bottom
pressure data from a five meter array in western Florida Bay and adjacent
southwest Florida shelf and Florida Keys, and 3-month surface drifter
trajectories from two satellite tracked drifters. These observations have
begun documenting: the highly-variable, low-salinity Shark River
discharge plume which is advected towards Florida Bay and the Keys;
extensive exchange between the GOM and western, but not eastern Florida
Bay; high chlorophyll concentrations indicative of planktonic uptake of
riverborne nutrients; a cyclonic recirculation between West Cape Sable
and Cape Romano; as well as a net southeastward flow from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Florida reef track through western Florida Bay.
Physical modelers guiding the Interagency Florida Bay PMC stressed these data as critical to model development and operation, especially exchange across the dynamic western boundary. Moreover, this NOAA project is leveraged by data and information exchange with Ned Smith (HBOI), through funding from EPA, as well as freshwater flow data from the USGS and the SFWMD.
4) Monitoring and Evaluation of Radar Measured Rain Estimate over Florida Bay and the Everglades"
This project was initiated in the late summer of 1995 and the first flights were made in the early Fall of 1995. Its objective is the tuning of radar rain estimation algorithms so that the NEXRAD data now being generated from the Miami site, and the newly commissioned Key West site, can be effectively used to accurately characterize the rainfall amount and distribution over the peninsula and Florida Bay. The present rain gage network is simply too sparse and inaccurate given the highly convective nature of rainfall events in the Florida Bay/Everglades system, to provide an adequate measure of the rainfall input to the system. The standard NEXRAD algorithms were developed largely for non-tropical conditions, and may not be applicable to this system. The best possible NEXRAD product is the only way to obtain the requisite data. Airborne rain drop distributions, a continuous point measurement of surface distributions from a distrometer at the Everglades Research Center, and surface measurements from a mobile van, as well as all available rain gage data are being used to tune the radar-rain algorithm for the specific conditions that prevail over the Florida Bay/Everglades system. Preliminary NEXRAD rainfall products have been made available on the InterNet (http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/hdp/). Within the next two years we anticipate this project will shift from a research to an operational mode.
Characterization of the Florida Bay ecosystem and documenting and understanding the processes responsible for the rapid changes of the past few decades is the goal of four biological projects and one geological paleoecological/paleoenvironmental project:
4) "Assessment of trophic structure and responses of fish and shellfish to changes in habitat in Florida Bay"
Initiated in FY94, this project repeats a larval fish survey of the Bay conducted by some of the same scientists a decade ago. During FY96 research was continued to address changes in the distribution and abundance of living resources in Florida Bay, and the question dealing with trophic relationships in the Bay in response to declining seagrasses, increased plankton blooms and altered salinity conditions relative to the previous decade. The field sampling program has dealt with phytoplankton, zooplankton, ichthyoplankton, juvenile and resident fishery organisms, relative to distributions of salinity and seagrass habitats within Everglades National Park waters. The present study is using techniques employed a decade previous and at identical or similar stations. Bay-wide sampling is demonstrating that there are numerous areas of the Bay where seagrasses have declined considerably since 1984, and that there have been an overall decrease in numerical abundance of resident fish. Changes in the composition of the fishery community also are being observed relative to 1984-85, specifically increases are seen in Gobiosoma robustum and Harengula jaguana and decreases in rainwater killifish. The changes noted continue to indicate a shift from a benthic-epibenthic feeding community, in large areas of the Bay, to one dominated by planktivores. This latter noted shift is an extremely significant result as emphasized by the Science Review Panel. While icthyoplankton aspects of this study will continue within the COP program the pure habitat aspects will henceforth receive support from the NMFS Living Marine Resources program.
5) "The trophodynamic roles of zooplankton in Florida Bay"
This program fills a critical gap in data, specifically the need for zooplankton data relative to the Bay's role as a nursery for larval and small juvenile forms whose food typically is zooplankton. This project began in FY94 and has bimonthly data sets to present, spanning both wet and dry seasons. It is aimed at understanding the dominant loss process for phytoplankton, zooplankton grazing, and to compare grazing losses to algal growth rates or productivity rates. Goals of this work are to understand the dynamics of phytoplankton blooms in Florida Bay and to characterize the trophodynamic role of these plankton.
Present data suggests that ingestion of phytoplankton by the community of copepod nauplii accounts for only a small fraction of the phytoplankton production. In July, phytoplankton growth rates in ambient versus nutrient-supplemented water were not different, suggesting that ambient growth was not limited by nutrients. The growth coefficient (1.50 day-1) indicated the phytoplankton community would double every sixteen hours without grazing. Moreover, the grazing coefficient (0.77 d-1) indicates a loss of approximately 75% of the phytoplankton standing crop per day. In September, phytoplankton growth coefficient (1.90 day-1) was even higher than July as was the grazing coefficient (1.36 day-1). Clearly, phytoplankton growth rate was very high in this location during both months, and local water column zooplankton grazing was the major fate of this production, although some production was available for other processes (other grazers, sinking, advection to another part of the system, or water column accumulation).
6) "The sediment record as a monitor of natural and anthropogenic changes in the lower Everglades/Florida Bay ecosystem"
This project has been funded since a "proof of concept" phase in FY94. It fills the role of retrospective evaluation of the critical interface between lower-peninsula Florida/Everglades and the Florida Bay by evaluation the paleoecology and anthopogenic changes within this region over the last 100+ years. As noted by the Panel "historical reconstruction is an appropriate goal in Florida Bay studies..." and they further stated that the experience of this program's PIs is critical in understanding the relative roles and importance of daily sedimentation/transport versus impacts of event-driven episodes of sedimentation on this ecosystem. Moreover, this project's integrated expertise represents a collaborative effort between NOAA and four different university research groups.
Analysis of cores to date indicate recovery of interpretable stratigraphic sequences with time horizons that extend back at least 100 years. Relative to anthropogenic activities, a geochemically supported baseline for natural Hg levels in sediments show that Hg concentrations were 5X natural levels in sediments deposited at the mouth of Shark River Slough since 1950 and that anthropogenic loading of Hg was progressively lower in post-1950 sediments from the lower Shark River, Ponce de Leon Bay and the more isolated Coot Bay. Pre-1950s sediments show limited Hg enrichment at each site when using geochemically normalized data. A similar trend was observed for lead. As a proxy for paleo-water-column conditions, preliminary carbon and oxygen isotopic analyses of ostracod valves reveals changes associated with inputs of freshwater at certain intervals in the core while the overall ostracod community structure and morphologic variability within particular species are also strongly salinity related. Shifts in benthic foram community structure were also observed. Progress in palynology includes both the creation of the first tropical-pollen reference set for the Everglades, the first WWW site for such, and critical detailed pollen facies maps for current surface environments that will allow meaningful interpretation of observed paleoecological shifts.
7) "An integrated study of pink shrimp
as indicators of habitat health in Florida Bay"
The study of pink shrimp fulfills the need for evaluating critical "representative species" whose status can be seen as indicative of restoration progress, as called for in the Interagency Science Plan. In part, this species is also of interest because Florida Bay constitutes the juvenile nursery area for this commercially valuable fishery resource. Project PIs, include NMFS, academic, and NBS scientists with extensive experience in the study of this species. The project objectives are to determine: A) functional relationships between pink shrimp growth and survival and environmental variables such as salinity and temperature and, B) determine sources of two or more within-year cohorts in fishery landings, in terms of space and timing. Results to date indicate that pink shrimp spawning occurs year round, but peak spawning appears related to bottom water temperature with maximum spawning occurring during maximum water temperatures on the Tortugas grounds. On inshore grounds densities are strongly related to habitat type; maximum densities on Florida Bay nursery grounds occur in beds of Halodule wrightii. Significant relationships were found with several environmental variables, however each was a significant explaining variable for only part of the time series. This suggests that the principal factors influencing recruitment may vary from one time period to another. This project will be continued and expanded within the context of the NMFS Living Marine Resources program since it focuses on higher trophic levels.
8)
"Sediment-water column interactions in nutrient-microalgal dynamics in
Florida Bay and the FKNMS"
Starting work in the Fall of 1995, the objective of this project is to understand the causes of the phytoplankton blooms in Florida Bay and to this end the sources of the nutrients need to be known. It is hypothesized that benthic nutrients are a major source and this project examines the role of sediment resuspension and the transport of nutrients between the sediments and the water column. As pointed out by the Panel "...relatively little effort has been directed towards understanding sediment resuspension ..." as related to the role this plays in nutrients and light limitations within the Bay. As such, this program's primary objective is to determine if present phytoplankton blooms are promoted primarily by benthic nutrients. Such knowledge will allow one to predict how various management practices may or may not reduce these phytoplankton blooms. This project seeks to determine if the distribution of the blooms corresponds to the distribution of nutrients in the sediments or the pattern of sediment resuspension. Observations to date indicate a large range of values for measured parameters when Florida Bay is contrasted with offshore areas such as the Florida Reef Track (e.g. Chl: 6.21 to 0.13 µg/l; turbidity: 99 to 0.01 NTUs; Salinities: 15-37.4 ppt.;) while throughtout the study area nutrients showed an equally large range (e.g. water column dissolved phosphate: 0.01 to 0.16 µM; nitrate: 0.02 to 4.68 µM, ammonia: undetectable to 28.85 µM, and silicate: 1.83 to 127.91 µM).
Two studies of anthropogenic pollution were funded by the NOAA Florida Bay program in FY96:
9) "An Ecotoxicological Assessment of Agricultural Nonpoint Source Runoff into Florida Bay and Surrounding Environments With an Emphasis on the Organochlorine Insecticide Endosulfan"
The deteriorating conditions of Florida Bay [increased phytoplankton blooms, declines/death in sea grass beds and coral reef communities, and trophic shifts in fish communities towards more herbivorous fish species] may be related in part to increased contaminant loadings from upland adjacent terrestrial environments including both urban and agricultural areas. Urban contaminants are primarily polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), some trace metals (e.g. Cu) and pesticides associated with urban landscaping (e.g. chlorpyrifos), termitacide control (formerly chlordane and presently chlorpyrifos), and golf course maintenance (chlorpyrifos and other insecticides as well as numerous herbicides and fungicides). Endosulfan was chosen as a contaminant for further toxicological studies because of the high usage on vegetable crops in Florida and high acute toxicity potential. Results indicate that during 1993-95 the presence of endosulfan and other pesticides was detected in agricultural areas and surface waters from Florida Bay. Approximately, 5.6% of the bay sites sampled had endosulfan concentrations which exceeded the marine water quality criteria (0.0085 ug/L) while 3.3% of the sites sampled had concentrations which exceeded the freshwater water quality criteria (0.056 ug/L) for endosulfan. Data for the spatial distributions of endosulfan II suggest that the source of the endosulfan is from agricultural runoff. Results of chronic toxicity potential tests of study-area sediments indicated significant (p <0.05) impact on the marine benthic copepod Amphiascus tenuiremis.
Relative to non-point source pollution, the EPA and state environmental agencies have the overall lead and have begun a sampling program in conjunction with this NOAA project. NOAA funding for this exploratory project is not expected to extend beyond FY97.
10) "Initial assessments of mercury in Florida Bay biota and development of models of mercury accumulation in target species"
The Science Plan for Florida Bay (1994) identified mercury as a contaminant of major concern. It was felt that Florida Bay, like the adjacent Everglades, might contain high levels of mercury in resident biota. It is hypothesized that if Everglades' freshwater runoff is an important source of methyl mercury to Florida Bay, then fish captured from areas nearest the Taylor Slough and Canal 111 inputs would contain the highest concentrations of methyl mercury. The results currently indicate that mercury concentrations in bay anchovies from eastern Florida Bay were of the same magnitude (0.177 to 0.422 µg Hg/g wet weight) as bay anchovies collected from a mercury contaminated Superfund site at Lavaca Bay, Texas. This suggests that predators on anchovies in eastern Florida Bay could bioaccumulate concentrations of mercury high enough to be of concern. Existence of lower Hg concentrations in anchovies at the site most distant from the Everglades which suggests a possible spatial gradient and this is sustained by data for silver jennies (mojarra) from the three sites nearest the Everglades which have marginally higher mean Hg concentrations (0.110, 0.120, 0.123 µg Hg/g) than a more distant site (0.092 µg Hg/g). Since this projects deals with toxic accumulation in higher trophic levels it will henceforth be continued as part of the NMFS Living Marine Resources program rather than the COP program.
The NOAA Florida Bay Program
has also funded essential non-research items:
11) Data
Management and Administration
One measure of program success is how well the research data can be accessed by interested parties. The Panel noted that "...data management systems should be developed in order to facilitate data sharing and accessibility by investigators and to ensure data preservation... and to develop networks that link distributed data bases...including GIS". It has been an objective of the NOAA Florida Bay Program to have a coherent data management policy, from the start, patterned along these very suggestions. At present, our data management structure is divided into three areas: internal data support; external data coordination; and administrative support for data items.
C. Applications From Funded Projects.
€Management Applications
The long-termed goal of research,
such as the work currently sponsored for south Florida, is that the
products of these research efforts ultimately manifests themselves in
tangible benefits to the environment and economy. To do so it must be
applicable to the managerial decision-making process at all levels and
the projects funded herein are designed to fulfill such a role either
directly or indirectly. Relative to the latter, the products of many
scientific projects will find their applicability over a longer time
horizon by providing environmental data to truth modeling efforts. On a
shorter time horizon some benefits have become available for such
decision making as the research progresses as in the examples noted
below.
The Princeton Ocean Model (POM) is being used by NOAA for the
Coastal Ocean Forecasting System (COFS) for the U.S. East Coast and it is
also the model in use at NOS to model Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay in the
GOM region.
Lauth, J. R., G.I. Scott, and D.S. Cherry. 1995. Evaluation of ecosystem level effects of endosulfan on a modular estuarine mesocosm. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 16th Annual Meeting and Second SETAC World Congress, Vancouver, B.C.; Abstract PH085: p301.
Lee, T.
N. and E. Johns, Variability of the Florida Keys Coastal Ocean. Florida
Bay Science Conference: A Report by Principal Investigators. Oct. 17-18,
1995.
Powell, M.D., and S. H. Houston, 1996: Hurricane Andrew's Wind Field at Landfall in South Florida. Part II: Applications to Real-time Analysis and Preliminary Damage Assessment. Wea. Forecasting, 11, 304-328.
Scott, G.I., M.H. Fulton, J.R. Kucklick and G. Thayer. 1995. An ecotoxicological assessment of pesticide and urban runoff to Florida Bay and surrounding environments. Florida Bay Science Conference, Univ. Of Florida, Gainesville, FLA: 1pp.
Sheridan, P., G. McMahan, G., Conley, A. Williams, and G. Thayer. Response of macrofaunal communities to seagrass mortality in Florida Bay (Florida, USA). I. Shallow bank-top habitats.
Thayer, G. W., P. L. Murphey, and M. W. LaCroix. 1994. Responses of plant communities in western Florida Bay to the die-off of seagrasses. Bulletin of Marine Science 54:718-726.
Zetwo, M., 1996. The Sediment Record as a Monitor of Natural and Anthropogenic Changes in the Lower Everglades/Florida Bay Ecosystem. Published by NOAA-AOML-OCD, 66 pages.
Robblee, M. B. 1995. Temporal and spatial variation in seagrass associated fish and invertebrates in western Florida Bay:A decadal comparison. Florida Bay Science Conference:A Report by Principal Investigators. Gainsville, FL. p. 170-172.
Robblee, M., and D. Neff. 1995. Distribution of the pink shrimp Penaeus duorarum in relation to changing habitat in western Florida Bay, 1985 to 1995. American Fisheries Society, Tampa, FL. p.163.
Thayer, G. W., M. W. LaCroix, J. Scope, J. M. Johnson, and M. B. Robblee. 1995. Micro- and macroscale response of resident fish communities to the seagrass die-off in Florida Bay. American Fisheries Society, Tampa, FL.
Trefry, J. H., W-J Kang, S. Metz, R.P. Trocine, H.R. Wanless, P. Blackwelder, T. Hood and T.A. Nelsen, 1996. Historical Changes in mercury and other trace metals in coastal sediments of southwestern Florida. Conference on Mercury in the Environment, Miami, Florida, Februuary 24-25, 1996.
Fulton, M.H., G.I. Scott, E.D. Strozier, E.F. Wirth and B.Thompson. 1995. Monitoring of pesticides in surface waters of Florida Bay and adjacent agricultural watersheds. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 16th Annual Meeting and Second SETAC World Congress, Vancouver, B.C.: Poster Presentation.
Gilbert, P. S. and T. N. Lee, Modes of Current Variability in the Southern Straits of Florida. Ocean Sciences Meeting, AGU, Feb. 12-16, 1996.
Lauth, J. R., G.I. Scott, and D.S. Cherry. 1995. Evaluation of ecosystem level effects of endosulfan on a modular estuarine mesocosm. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 16th Annual Meeting and Second SETAC World Congress, Vancouver, B.C.: Poster Presentation.
Lee, T. N., and E. Johns, Mean and Seasonal Cycles of Currents in the Florida Keys. Florida Coastal Ocean Sciences and Technology Symposium. Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. April 9-10, 1996.
Lee, T. N., Physical Oceanographic Measurements in Florida Bay. Invited Talk at Florida Bay Interagency Modeling Workshop, Marathon, Fl., April 17-18, 1996.
Lee, T. N., Overview of Florida Bay Circulation. Invited Talk at Florida Bay Nutrient Workshop, Florida Bay Program Management Committee, Key Largo, Florida, July 1-2, 1996.
Robblee, M., and D. Neff. 1995. Distribution of the pink shrimp Penaeus duorarum in relation to changing habitat in western Florida Bay, 1985 to 1995. American Fisheries Society.
Robblee, M. B. 1995. Temporal and spatial variation in seagrass associated fish and invertebrates in western Florida Bay:A decadal comparison. Florida Bay Science Conference, Gainesville, Fl.
Scott, G.I., M.H. Fulton, J.R. Kucklick and G. Thayer. 1995. An ecotoxicological assessment of pesticide and urban runoff to Florida Bay and surrounding environments. Florida Bay Science Conference, Univ. Of Florida, Gainesville, FLA: Platform Presentation
Thayer, G. W. Impact of seagrass habitat changes on fisheries in Florida Bay. Given at: NMFS Headquarters, Silver Spring, MD, August 1995,
Thayer, G. W. Impact of seagrass habitat changes on fisheries in Florida Bay. Given at: University of Southhampton, Southampton England, Sept. 1995 University of Liverpool, Isle of Man, Great Britain, Sept. 1995.
Thayer, G. W. Impact of seagrass habitat
changes on fisheries in Florida Bay. Given at: Centre d'Estudis Avancats
de Blanes, Blanes, Spain. Sept. 1995.
Thayer, G. W. October 1995. NMFS Beaufort Laboratory Florida Bay research program. Florida Bay Science Conference, Gainesville, FL.
Trefry, J.
H., W-J Kang, S. Metz, R.P. Trocine, H.R. Wanless, P. Blackwelder, T.
Hood and T.A. Nelsen, 1996. Historical Changes in mercury and other trace
metals in coastal sediments of southwestern Florida. Conference on
Mercury in the Environment, Miami, Florida, Februuary 24-25,
1996.
€ Partnerships Funded or Built Through This Program
Partnerships benefit programs in today's research climate by increasing the resource pool of both expertise and leveraging funding. The NOAA Florida Bay Program has encouraged such partnerships. For our program they include, but are not limited to:
Measurements and modeling efforts that provide building blocks for follow-on, larger-scale modeling efforts.
Mutual model simulation test periods for Florida Bay Boundary conditions between our investigators and the COE/WES.
Leveraging of the regional atmospheric modeling effort and boundary layer research involved in this project to receive partial (3 months salary/year) funding for a 5-year, $1 million/year research proposal entitled "Remote Sensing and Prediction of the Coastal Marine Boundary Layer" from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
We intend to apply the Doppler radar wind/reflectivity retrieval techniques currently being developed at CAPS to assimilate full volumetric scans from NEXRAD radar sites (Melbourne, Miami, Key West and Tampa) into ARPS to obtain the highest-resolution, state-of-the-art regional atmospheric analyses and forecasts possible.
Working closely with the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), a proposal has been drafted to use ARPS-predicted rainfall and ET patterns to drive both the Natural System Model (NSM) and the South Florida Water Management Model (SFWMM).
In cooperation with the National Biological Service scientists stationed at Florida International University, a "concept letter" on the development of a model to assess ecosystem response to a tropical cyclone landfall has been developed.
With the assistance of students from Florida International University and MAST Academy, the program is setting up the archival of images of the wind fields on the AOML World Wide Web (WWW) site for access by other Florida Bay researchers.
The NOAA sediment retrospective analysis program has pooled expertise between NOAA and four universities as well as a cooperative effort with similar USGS efforts. In an agreement with the USGS (Dr. R. Halley) NOAA will investigate the lower Everglades/Florida Bay interface while the USGS will focus on Florida Bay proper.
Our Florida Bay circulation study is working in conjunction with colleagues from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and the ACoE WESLAB as are our plankton field studies.