Research Index
Consortium for Estuarine Ecoindicator Research for the Gulf of Mexico
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Research
Human population growth accompanied by agricultural, industrial and urban development has led to an unprecedented acceleration of contaminant and nutrient inputs into coastal estuaries and their watersheds. According to the NOAA National Estuarine Inventory (1990) the Gulf of Mexico ranks highest of all coastal regions in the U.S. in the number of wastewater treatment plants (1,300), number of industrial point sources (2,000), percent of land use devoted to agriculture (31%), and the application of fertilizer to agricultural lands (62,000 tons of phosphorus and 758,000 tons of nitrogen). Eutrophication, due to high nutrient loading and resulting hypoxia, is recognized as a major water quality concern in Gulf of Mexico estuaries (USEPA, 1999). A variety of other environmental stressors, including contaminants, loss of critical habitats such as wetlands, increased turbidity and pathogens also contribute to the degradation of these estuaries. Moreover, further population increases along the gulf coast projected for the early decades of this century will exacerbate environmental stress and degradation of estuarine ecosystems. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop and validate a widely applicable suite of indicators that can provide an integrated assessment of the ecological condition of estuaries in the Gulf of Mexico. New indicators are required that integrate the combined effects of multiple and sometimes unknown stressors in order to provide a reliable gauge of the ecological condition of our nation’s estuaries.
Projects:
Fish Reproduction
Crustacean Hypoxia
Macrobenthic Ecoindicators
Biofilm Project
Data Analysis Core
Remote Sensing/GIS
