Management relevance of benthic biogeography at multiple scales in coastal waters of the northeast U.S.

Continuing pressures from human activities have harmed the health of ocean ecosystems, particularly those near the coast. Current management practices that operate on one sector at a time have not resulted in healthy oceans that can sustainably provide the ecosystem services humans want and need. Now, adoption of ecosystem-based management (EBM) and coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP) as foundational principles for ocean management in the United States should result in a more holistic approach. Recent marine biogeographical studies and benthic habitat mapping using satellite imagery, large-scale monitoring programs, ocean observation systems, acoustic and video techniques, landscape ecology, geographic information systems, integrated databases, and ecological modeling provide information that can support EBM, make CMSP ecologically meaningful, and contribute to planning for marine biodiversity conservation. Examples from coastal waters along the northeast coast of the United States from Delaware Bay to Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine, illustrate how benthic biogeography and bottom seascape diversity information is a useful lens through which to view EBM and CMSP in nearshore waters. The focus is on benthic communities, which are widely used in monitoring programs and are sensitive to many stresses from human activities.

Benthic macroinvertebrate community response to environmental changes over seven decades in an urbanized estuary in the northeastern United States.

Narragansett Bay is representative of New England, USA urbanized estuaries, with colonization in the early 17th century, and development into industrial and transportation centers in the late 18th and early 20th century. Increasing nationwide population and lack of infrastructure maintenance led to environmental degradation, and then eventual improvement after implementation of contaminant control and sewage treatment starting in the 1970s. Benthic macroinvertebrate community structure was expected to respond to these environmental changes. This study assembled data sets from the 1950s through 2010s to examine whether quantitative aggregate patterns in the benthic community corresponded qualitatively to stressors and management actions in the watershed. In Greenwich Bay and Providence River, patterns of benthic response corresponded to the decline and then improvement in sewage treatment at the Fields Point wastewater treatment plant. In Mount Hope Bay, the benthos corresponded to changes in bay fish populations due to thermal discharge from the Brayton Point power plant. The benthos of the Upper West Passage corresponded to climatic changes that caused regime shifts in the plankton and fish communities. Future work will examine the effects of further environmental improvements in the face of continued climatic changes and population growth.

Beyond data management: how ecoinformatics can benefit environmental monitoring programs.

We review ways in which the new discipline of ecoinformatics is changing how environmental monitoring data are managed, synthesized, and analyzed. Rapid improvements in information technology and strong interest in biodiversity and sustainable ecosystems are driving a vigorous phase of development in ecological databases. Emerging data standards and protocols enable these data to be shared in ways that have previously been difficult. We use the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Coastal Assessment (NCA) as an example. The NCA has collected biological, chemical, and physical data from thousands of stations around the U.S. coasts since 1990. NCA data that were collected primarily to assess the ecological condition of the U.S. coasts can be used in innovative ways, such as biogeographical studies to analyze species invasions. NCA application of ecoinformatics tools leads to new possibilities for integrating the hundreds of thousands of NCA species records with other databases to address broad-scale and long-term questions such as environmental impacts, global climate change, and species invasions.

Six decades of change in pollution and benthic invertebrate biodiversity in a southern New England estuary.

Pollution has led to a decline of benthic invertebrate biodiversity of Narragansett Bay, raising questions about effects on ecosystem functions and services including shellfish production, energy flow to fishes, and biogeochemical cycles. Changes in community composition and taxonomic distinctness (biodiversity) were calculated from the 1950s-when quantitative benthic invertebrate data first became available-to 2015. Change in community composition of the bay was correlated with changes in dissolved inorganic nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, and sediment contaminants. A mid-bay reference site showed moderate changes in community composition but no change in biodiversity. In contrast, a more impacted site in the upper bay showed substantial differences in community composition over time and a decline in taxonomic distinctness. Bay-wide, as inputs of some stressors such as nutrients and sediment contaminants have declined, there are signs of recovery of benthic biodiversity but other stressors such as temperature and watershed development are increasing.

Subtidal Benthic Invertebrates Shifting Northward Along the US Atlantic Coast.

Numerous marine and terrestrial species have shifted their ranges poleward in response to warming from global climate change. However, few studies have examined range shifts of subtidal benthic communities in estuarine and nearshore waters. This study examined 20 years (1990-2010) of occurrence and abundance data of soft-bottom, benthic invertebrates along the Atlantic coast of the USA. Data from two biogeographic provinces (Carolinian and Virginian), which spanned 15° of latitude from mid-Florida to Cape Cod, were extracted from a national coastal assessment program. Mean water temperatures increased significantly during the study period, bottom water by 1.6 °C and surface water by 1.7 °C. Of 25 species with significant changes in centers of abundance (out of the 30 most prevalent), 18 (60%) shifted northward and 7 (23%) shifted southward. Species that shifted north moved an average distance of 181 km, in contrast with 65 km for species that shifted south. The southern limits of 22 species showed significant northward shifts; because there was little change in northern limits, this resulted in an average 25% range contraction. Community composition changed during the study period, most notably in southern latitudes. Five Carolinian species surmounted their northerly biogeographic boundary. Consequences of these range shifts include changes in benthic community structure and function, which have strong implications for ecosystem functioning and services including changes in fisheries dependent upon benthic prey.

Ecological condition of US Mid-Atlantic estuaries, 1997-1998.

The Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA-Estuaries) evaluated ecological conditions in US Mid-Atlantic estuaries during the summers of 1997 and 1998. Over 800 probability-based stations were monitored in four main estuarine systems--Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware Estuary, Maryland and Virginian coastal bays, and the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System. Twelve smaller estuaries within the four main systems were also assessed to establish variance at the local scale. A subset of the MAIA-Estuaries data is used here to estimate the extent of eutrophication, sediment contamination, and benthic degradation in mid-Atlantic estuaries. An Environmental Report Card and Index of Environmental Integrity summarize conditions in individual estuaries, the four estuarine systems, and the entire MAIA region. Roughly 20-50% of the region showed signs of eutrophication (high nutrients, excessive production of organic matter, poor water clarity, or depleted dissolved oxygen), 30% had contaminated sediments, and 37% had degraded benthic communities. Compared with the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP)-Virginian Province study in 1990-1993, larger fractions of Chesapeake Bay (17%) and Delaware River (32%) had increased metals or organics in sediments.

Managing troubled data: coastal data partnerships smooth data integration.

Understanding the ecology, condition, and changes of coastal areas requires data from many sources. Broad-scale and long-term ecological questions, such as global climate change, biodiversity, and cumulative impacts of human activities, must be addressed with databases that integrate data from several different research and monitoring programs. Various barriers, including widely differing data formats, codes, directories, systems, and metadata used by individual programs, make such integration troublesome. Coastal data partnerships, by helping overcome technical, social, and organizational barriers, can lead to a better understanding of environmental issues, and may enable better management decisions. Characteristics of successful data partnerships include a common need for shared data, strong collaborative leadership, committed partners willing to invest in the partnership, and clear agreements on data standards and data policy. Emerging data and metadata standards that become widely accepted are crucial. New information technology is making it easier to exchange and integrate data. Data partnerships allow us to create broader databases than would be possible for any one organization to create by itself.