Research in Estuarine & Coastal Processes

• Goals
• Accomplishments

Coordinator: J. Val Klump, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The Great Lakes have more than 10,000 miles of seacoast-like shores in a series of four subbasins that drain an area totaling nearly 200,000 square miles. Historically, lake levels have fluctuated by about six feet on time scales of decades or less, making the coastal boundary one of the most dynamic interfaces in this system.

Despite their huge size, however, these freshwater inland seas are largely closed basins, so their waters are heavily influenced by interactions at the land-water interface. Consequently, changes in land-use patterns throughout the Great Lakes watershed since the early 1800s have also exerted a tremendous effect on the lakes by supplying nutrients, sediments, toxic contaminants and wastes via tributary streams, rivers and estuaries.

This coastal boundary represents not only a geologically, chemically and biologically dynamic environment, it is also the site of some of the most intense economic, social and political pressures within the Great Lakes basin. Throughout the Great Lakes, today s estuarine and coastal environments are often characterized as areas of intense development, urbanization and industrialization; areas of high biological productivity and natural diversity; and areas of high recreational value.

Coastal and estuarine ecosystems are thus regions of multiple, and often competing, resource uses. Efforts to sustain and enhance these resources are at the forefront of many environmental management strategies. Developing the scientific basis for sound management practice is an underlying goal of research within this subprogram. The Estuarine & Coastal Processes Subprogram encourages studies that have a broad perspective and take an ecosystem approach.

 

The long-range goals of the Estuarine and Coastal Processes Subprogram are to:

• Understand, through interdisciplinary research, the ecology of freshwater estuaries, and to facilitate the rehabilitation and sustainability of estuarine ecosystems through the design, support and assessment of cost-effective remediation and management strategies

• Obtain a new level of quantitative understanding of the processes that dominate the transports, transformations and fates of biologically, chemically and geologically important constituents through and across the coastal boundaries of the Great Lakes

• Elaborate the dynamics of change in Great Lakes estuarine and coastal ecosystems, particularly the role of terrestrial-aquatic interactions in the coastal zone and the impact of major changes in base properties, such as nutrient and contaminant loading, biota and food web structure, water levels and climate.

 

Research priorities and emerging issues in the Estuarine & Coastal Processes Subprogram include:

• Studies of coastal and estuarine ecosystem dynamics in the areas of:
  • biogeochemical cycling and mass balances
  • transport, fate, effects and elimination of toxic contaminants
  • changing biodiversity and abundance, food web structure and fisheries (particularly in nearshore communities supporting yellow perch, zebra mussels and other important species)

• Cost-effective methods for long-term tracking of ecosystem health through the application of new and emerging technologies and monitoring tools, such as databases and remote sensing, and the use of non-steady state ecosystem models and methods for forecasting ecosystem response

• The impacts of event-driven perturbations on coastal and estuarine ecosystems, including the transport, transformation and fate of biogeochemically important constituents as they move from land-based sources through estuaries and coastal systems to open water

• Characterization of land-water interactions (e.g., the impacts of land-use activities within watersheds and landscape changes on estuaries, the processes that control the fluxes of materials and biota between terrestrial and aquatic systems, and the role of wetland and littoral communities)

• Development of methods for ecosystem rehabilitation and remediation, including:
  • criteria for establishing remediation goals
  • determination of attainable levels of rehabilitation
  • technologies for implementation

• Studies of coastal and estuarine-related economic, legal and other policy issues, including:
  • valuation, ownership and stewardship of estuarine and coastal resources
  • social and economic (cost:benefit) analyses of alternative strategies (including financing) for ecosystem remediation and resource management
  • integration of scientific research into strategic planning
  • proactive protection and preservation of estuarine and coastal resources.

 

This page created 1995
Last updated 07 November 2001 by Wittman
© University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute
designed by Tina Yao tlyao@seagrant.wisc.edu

http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/Research/Estuarine/research.html