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Publications (73)
Ocean acidification and warming threaten marine life, yet the impact of these processes on microbes remains unclear. Here, we performed basin-scale DNA metabarcoding of prokaryotes (16S V4–V5) and protists (18S V9) in the Gulf of Mexico and applied generalized linear models to reveal group-specific environmental correlates of functionally diverse m...
Harmful algal blooms, or red tides, on the West Florida Shelf are annual events that have wide-ranging impacts on the ecosystem. Stakeholder input was instrumental in acknowledging the effects that ultimately led to extra mortality being included in the stock assessment for two federally-managed groupers. However, the patchy nature of red tides req...
Ocean acidification (OA) threatens coral reef persistence by decreasing calcification and accelerating the dissolution of reef frameworks. The carbonate chemistry of coastal areas where many reefs exist is strongly influenced by the metabolic activity of the underlying benthic community, contributing to high spatiotemporal variability. While charac...
This research presents a preliminary water quality model for Biscayne Bay (Florida, USA). During the month of December 2018, water quality monitoring stations located in central Biscayne Bay reported total phosphorous concentration (TP) peaks ranging from 0.03 to 0.052 mg/L. Median TP concentrations range between 0.003 to 0.004 mg/L. The water qual...
Coral cover has declined worldwide due to anthropogenic stressors that manifest on both global and local scales. Coral communities that exist in extreme conditions can provide information on how these stressors influence ecosystem structure, with implications for their persistence under future conditions. The Port of Miami is located within an urba...
Macrophyte foundation species provide both habitat structure and primary production, and loss of these habitats can alter species interactions and lead to changes in energy flow in food webs. Extensive seagrass meadows in Florida Bay have recently experienced a widespread loss of seagrass habitat due to a Thalassia testudinum mass mortality event i...
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis on the West Florida Shelf have become a nearly annual occurrence causing widespread ecological and economic harm. Effects range from minor respiratory irritation and localized fish kills to large-scale and long-term events causing massive mortalities to marine organisms. Report...
Microzooplankton are considered the primary consumers of phytoplankton in marine environments. Microzooplankton grazing rates on phytoplankton have been studied across the globe, but there are still large regions of the ocean that are understudied, such as subtropical coastal oceans. One of these regions is the coastal area around south Florida, US...
This is an updated version of the previous preprint of the same name.
Qualitative Network Models (QNMs), Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), and Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) have been proposed as methods to formalize conceptual models of social–ecological systems and project system responses to management interventions or environmental change. To explore how these different methods might influence conclusions about syste...
Seagrasses are threatened worldwide due to anthropogenic and natural disturbances disrupting the multiple feedbacks needed to maintain these ecosystems. If the disturbance is severe enough, seagrass systems may undergo a regime shift to a degraded system state that is resistant to recovery. In Florida Bay, Florida, United States, two recent, large-...
The ecosystem‐based fisheries management (EBFM) framework has a solid theoretical justification and has been embraced in principle by many regions; yet, systematic implementation remains a challenge. In regions with strong governance, single‐species stock assessment and management has been successful in ending overfishing and maintaining stocks nea...
In the marine science community of practice, the concept of ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a management strategy that incorporates the entire ecosystem, including humans, into resource management decisions and is growing in its use to integrate and manage complex social and marine ecosystems. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...
In response to calls for marine ecosystem-based management (EBM), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) developed a multidisciplinary science support framework called integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA). The IEA framework and a national NOAA program for implementing that framework were the culmination of many efforts in...
Physical, chemical, geological, and biological factors interact in marine environments to shape complex but recurrent patterns of organization of life on multiple spatial and temporal scales. These factors define biogeographic regions in surface waters that we refer to as seascapes. We characterize seascapes for the Florida Keys National Marine San...
Hurricanes are important ecological disturbances that maintain biodiversity. We investigated the short-term impacts of Hurricane Irma, a category 4 storm that passed through south Florida on September 10, 2017, on fish and macroinvertebrate communities of western and north-central Florida Bay, FL, USA. Spatiotemporal trends in physical water condit...
Widespread and persistent Ecosystem Disruptive Algal Blooms dominated by marine picocyanobacteria (Synechococcus) commonly occur in the subtropical lagoonal estuary of Florida Bay (U.S.A). These blooms have been linked to a decline in natural sheet flow over the past century from upstream Everglades National Park. Remote sensing algorithms for moni...
Anthropogenic eutrophication threatens numerous aquatic ecosystems across the globe. Proactive management that prevents a system from becoming eutrophied is more effective and cheaper than restoring a eutrophic system, but detecting early warning signs and problematic nutrient sources in a relatively healthy system can be difficult. The goal of thi...
The short-term (< 6 months) effects of Hurricane Irma on water quality and phytoplankton community structure were assessed in Biscayne Bay and the adjacent coastal canals from September 2017 through January 2018. The bay experienced sharp fluctuations in daily average salinity and salinity gradients during the passage of the hurricane and significa...
The Gulf of Mexico is an ecologically and economically important marine ecosystem that is affected by a variety of natural and anthropogenic pressures. These complex and interacting pressures, together with the dynamic environment of the Gulf, present challenges for the effective management of its resources. The recent adoption of Bayesian networks...
Hill-climb description and additional Figures.
(PDF)
DDDBN model predictions.
Generated predictions by the DDDBN model. The series marked with stars denote the predictions as opposed to the observed data denoted by circles. 95% confidence intervals report bootstrap prediction’s mean and standard deviation.
(TIF)
Pink shrimp and oxygen concentration.
(A) Pink shrimp recruitment deviation. (B) Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentration for the Texas coastal shelf in fall.
(TIF)
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is the DNA suspended in the environment (e.g., water column), which includes cells, gametes, and other material derived from but not limited to shedding of tissue, scales, mucus, and fecal matter. Amplifying and sequencing marker genes (i.e., metabarcoding) from eDNA can reveal the wide range of taxa present in an ecosystem...
The northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is an ecologically and economically productive system that supports some of the largest volume and most valuable fisheries in the United States. The benefit of these fisheries to society and to the surrounding Gulf communities has varied historically, commensurate with the fish population sizes and the economic act...
Measurements of the status and trends of key indicators for the ocean and marine life are required to inform policy and management in the context of growing human uses of marine resources, coastal development, and climate change. Two synergistic efforts identify specific priority variables for monitoring: Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) through th...
A picophytoplankton bloom dominated by Synechococcus formed in September 2005 in a series of shallow lagoons between Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay and lasted until May 2008. Chlorophyll a concentrations peaked at >20 μg L⁻¹. The bloom coincided with a massive mortality of sponges and caused massive mortality of the seagrass. However, follow-up analy...
Few conceptual frameworks attempt to connect disaster-associated environmental injuries to impacts on ecosystem services (the benefits humans derive from nature) and thence to both psychological and physiological human health effects. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first, if not the first, to develop a detailed conceptual model of how d...
Risk assessments quantify the probability of undesirable events along with their consequences. They are used to prioritize management interventions and assess tradeoffs, serving as an essential component of ecosystem-based management (EBM). A central objective of most risk assessments for conservation and management is to characterize uncertainty a...
The Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) approach was designed to assimilate scientific knowledge in the ideal format for providing advice to inform marine Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM). As such, IEAs were envisioned as the cornerstone integrated science product for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that would maximi...
The aim of ecosystem-based management (EBM) is to maintain an ecosystem in a healthy, productive and resilient condition through the implementation of policies and management measures. Although cross-sectoral planning may be led by a planning competent authority, it is up to the sector competent authority to implement the necessary management measu...
The circulation and exchange processes controlling transport and water renewal within the western subregion of Florida Bay, USA, are presented and compared to our previous findings for the north-central and northeast subregions of the bay. We find there is a common bank/basin flow response to wind forcing that is the primary driver of water renewal...
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most ecologically and economically valuable marine ecosystems in the world and is affected by a variety of natural and anthropogenic phenomena including climate, hurricanes, coastal development, agricultural runoff, oil spills, and fishing. These complex and interacting stressors, together with the highly dynamic na...
The Florida Bay ecosystem supports a number of economically important ecosystem services, including several recreational fisheries, which may be affected by changing salinity and temperature due to climate change. In this paper, we use a combination of physical models and habitat suitability index models to quantify the effects of potential climate...
Marine ecosystem based management plans are gaining popularity with natural resource managers, but examples of their successful implementation remain few. The complexity inherent in marine ecosystems presents a major obstacle to understanding how individual ecosystem pressures impact multiple ecosystem states that in turn impact the provisioning of...
The Florida Bay ecosystem supports a number of economically important ecosystem services, including several recreational fisheries, which may be affected by changing salinity and temperature due to climate change. In this paper, we use a combination of physical models and habitat suitability index models to quantify the effects of potential climate...
In situ fluorometers were deployed during the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Gulf of Mexico oil spill to track the subsea oil plume. Uncertainties regarding instrument specifications and capabilities necessitated performance testing of sensors exposed to simulated, dispersed oil plumes. Dynamic ranges of the Chelsea Technologies Group AQUAtracka, Turner D...
Despite the importance of the West Florida Shelf (WFS) on regional ecology and local economy, systematic shelf-wide assessment of the ocean biology has not been conducted, primarily because of budgetary limitations for routine field campaigns and unknown accuracy of satellite-based data products. Here, using shipboard spectral normalized water-leav...
There is a pressing need to integrate biophysical and human dimensions science to better inform holistic ecosystem management supporting the transition from single species or single-sector management to multi-sector ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management should focus upon ecosystem services, since they reflect societal goals, values...
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as a basic approach for managing human activities in marine ecosystems, with
the aim of recovering and conserving marine ecosystems and the services they deliver. Integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs)
further the transition of EBM from principle to practice by providing an efficient, transparent means...
The overall goal of the MARine and Estuarine goal Setting (MARES) project for South Florida is “to reach a science-based consensus about the defining characteristics and fundamental regulating processes of a South Florida coastal marine ecosystem that is both sustainable and capable of providing the diverse ecosystem services upon which our society...
Biscayne Bay is a large subtropical estuary that extends from Broward County in the north to Barnes Sound in the south.While average depths are shallow, the Bay also includes portions of the Intracoastal Waterway, the Port of Miami,and numerous dredged channels to support commercial and recreational boating. The highly developed and economically vi...
Circulation in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is dominated by mesoscale features that include the Loop Current (LC), Loop Current Rings (LCRs), and smaller frontal eddies. During May-June 2010, while oil was still flowing from the Macondo well following the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) platform explosion on April 20, 2010, drifter trajectories, satellite obse...
Quantifying the relationship between mesozooplankton and water quality parameters identifies the factors that structure the
mesozooplankton community and can be used to generate hypotheses regarding the mechanisms that control the mesozooplankton
population and potentially the trophic network. To investigate this relationship, mesozooplankton and w...
Altered freshwater inflows have affected circulation, salinity, and water quality patterns of Florida Bay, in turn altering the structure and function of this estuary. Changes in water quality and salinity and associated loss of dense turtle grass and other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in Florida Bay have created a condition in the bay where...
Water quality surveys conducted in Biscayne Bay, Florida, indicated enhanced nutrient input coupled with increased runoff as a result of precipitation associated with Hurricane Katrina. Nutrient concentrations before Katrina ranged from 0.06–24.2 μM (mean 3.3 μM) for nitrate and 0.01–0.18 μM (mean 0.1 μM) for soluble reactive phosphate. Five days a...
The northeast subregion of Florida Bay receives approximately 75% of the direct freshwater runoff to the bay, most of which is retained within the subregion and has little impact on the dilution of hypersalinity development in adjacent subregions. Using direct measurements of the volume transports through connecting channels and indirectly estimati...
In July 1998 approximately 2.5 × 108 of recently-spawned Mercenaria spp. larvae were intentionally released in the northernmost basin of the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, to characterize the initial dispersion from a point source at time scales of hours to days. Larval densities measured with a quantitative molecular method indicated ambient concen...
Challenges associated with species identification, live collection and laboratory maintenance of billfish larvae have hindered research on their physiology and behavior. In the present study, short-duration neuston net tows in the Straits of Florida yielded 19 live istiophorid billfish larvae, which were immediately placed in a shipboard vertical s...
The salinity of Florida Bay has undergone dramatic changes over the past century. Salinity values reached their most extreme, up to 70, in the late 1980s, concurrent with ecological changes in Florida Bay including a mass seagrass die-off. In this study, surface salinity was measured at approximately monthly intervals between 1998 and 2004. The 7-y...
Sea surface temperature imagery, ship-based surveys, and moored current meters described the passage of a Tortugas Eddy as it moved east at ca. 6 km day−1 through the southern Straits of Florida (SSF). In mid-April 1999 the eddy SST signature extended across half the width of the Straits. While in the western SSF, the eddy center was ca. 30 km seaw...
Near real-time data from the MODIS satellite sensor was used to detect and trace a harmful algal bloom (HAB), or red tide, in SW Florida coastal waters from October to December 2004. MODIS fluorescence line height (FLH in W m− 2 μm− 1 sr− 1) data showed the highest correlation with near-concurrent in situ chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl in mg m− 3...
Light attenuation in marine ecosystems can limit primary production and determine the species composition and abundance of
primary producers. In Florida Bay, the importance of understanding the present light environment has heightened as major upstream
water management restoration projects have been proposed and some are already being implemented....
During the winter months (December to April), the SE United States is influenced by continental air masses from the north or northwest which pass at approximately 4 to 7 d intervals. These wind events can cause suspension of bottom sediments in Florida Bay. Over a 9 d period in March 2001, we examined the effects of a wind-mixing event on the pelag...
A long liquid waveguide capillary flow cell has been successfully adapted to a gas-segmented continuous flow auto-analyzer for trace analysis of iron in water. The flow cell was made of new material, Teflon AF-2400, which has a refractive index (1.29) lower than water (1.33). Total reflection of light can be achieved, provided that the incident ang...
Title on abstract page differs slightly. Thesis (M.S.)--University of Miami, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-77).
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