RECOMMENDATION 1. Synthesis Reports addressing each central question should be completed within one-year and should be put on electronic media (websites, CD ROMs, etc) for review.

RESPONSE 1. The Synthesis section of the Executive Officer’s report outlines the PMC’s strategy for synthesis. Briefly, synthesis is being pursued through a number of smaller, more focussed activities instead of focusing exclusively on each question. This approach was selected, after much thought, because it makes best use of the resources and talent in the manner that they are available to the Program. Comprehensive synthesis reports organized around the central questions are seen as a long-term effort. The "mini-syntheses" that comprise the PMC’s strategy contribute to this effort.

RECOMMENDATION 2. Research Teams should actively engage in interpretation of results, consensus building, program direction, and time tables. Teams meeting prior to topical workshops would make the workshops more goal oriented and effective.

RESPONSE 2. Progress by each of the teams is described in the individual research team reports. The success with which the teams have pursued objectives outlined by the Panel varies greatly among the teams. While the Physical Science Team continues to operate effectively, other teams, such as the Nutrient Team, have stalled after a promising start. Part of the work of the Executive Officer has been to assist team building and support efforts by the teams to reach these goals.

RECOMMENDATION 3. A program timetable closely linked with the central questions should be developed and implemented. The newly appointed PMC Program Manager should carefully monitor the development of performance schedules and timetables and strive toward their implementation.

RESPONSE 3. The activities of the Executive Officer have been directed toward formulating and implementing Program activities to forge links between research and restoration management as rapidly as possible. These activities, which are described in the Executive Officer’s report, operate largely across the research areas defined by the central questions, rather than within these areas. This is consistent with the need for integration and synthesis as part of making the results of research available to managers.

RECOMMENDATION 4. Communication between the PMC and the FBSOP needs to be improved. The PMC Program Manager should routinely produce informative program briefing documents.

RESPONSE 4. The Executive Officer’s report is the first of these briefing documents.

RECOMMENDATION 5. The PMC’s geographic expansion should not dilute resources or PMC attention to the critical issues relating to Florida Bay. The PMC should develop an organizational strategy that allows it to address its geographically expanded mandate while preserving necessary attention to Florida Bay.

RESPONSE 5. The PMC has devised a strategy in consultation with NOAA and Interior representatives that accomplishes this mission. In essence, the strategy consists of establishing a series of sub-committees for each estuary/region outside of Florida Bay. These "mini-PMCs" would be chaired by the appropriate regionally focussed member of the full PMC and composed of individuals for the region and/or responsible for the research activities in that region. Other members of the PMC can serve in an advisory capacity to these sub-committees as needed.

RECOMMENDATION 1. The disconnect between calcareous micro-fossils being laid down in unconsolidated sediments and annual banding in sessile corals and the environmental conditions in the inner and lower Bay must be addressed if there is any hope of constructing an environmental history of Florida Bay.

RESPONSE Research in this area is wrapping up. Publications from this work are expected to become available in the next several months. It is planned to produce a brief synthesis document for the Florida Bay Science Conference in November 1999.

RECOMMENDATION 2. It should be a priority of the Paleoecology Research Team to produce a consensus reconstruction of salinity trends and variability in Florida Bay as they relate to climatic variability and water management practices.

RECOMMENDATION 3. Prager’s (USGS) model of critical wave height-wind velocity and Stumpf’s (USGS) satellite observations should be interrelated to provide a larger scale historical perspective.

RECOMMENDATION1. FIU/SERP’s water quality database needs to be easily accessible and used extensively by investigators.

RESPONSE 1. These data are generally available, and they are being used in the efforts this year to develop ecological performance measures.

RECOMMENDATION 2. Lee’s (UM) Lagrangian measurements are valuable but few in number and effort should be made in conjunction with the Eulerian measurements to gauge the representativeness of these measurements.

RESPONSE 2. The Physical Science Team report summarizes recent progress in this area. A comparison of Lagrangian and Eulerian observations of current flows is underway.

RECOMMENDATION 3. Efforts should be undertaken to examine the vertical flow structure over the central portion of the Bay.

RESPONSE 3. Vertical CTD profiles are routinely made near the centers of the Florida Bay basins in all regions of the Bay. Analysis of these data is underway. Dye studies in a representative central basin is planned for summer of 1999. Current profiling is planned to occur at the same time using a ADCP mounted forward of the hulls on a small catamaran.

RECOMMENDATION 4. Efforts should be undertaken to address nutrient input and export across the entire western boundary, particularly across the banks and channels separating the Gulf Transition Zone and Western Florida Bay.

RESPONSE 4. Our regular survey deliberately assesses the western boundary as does the mooring array. We are also funding Hitchcock and Vargo to specifically address this topic with Lagrangian data on cruises scheduled for the Spring of 1999.

RECOMMENDATION 5. A set of modeling scenarios should be reserved for addressing nutrient pathways and budgets.

RESPONSE 5. The first phase of development of the water quality model will not be complete until this fall.

RECOMMENDATION 6. An attempt to measure spatial structure of evaporation should be made.

RESPONSE 6. Possible approaches to making estimates of evaporation were discussed at the Physical Sciences Team meeting. The Program will draft a proposal based on these discussions to be used in discussions with cooperating agencies aimed at securing support for this work.

RECOMMENDATION 7. Nutrient input estimates (including atmospheric) are sparse and should be expanded.

RESPONSE 7. A paper presenting preliminary nutrient budgets for Florida Bay is due to be published in June in a special issue of Estuaries. This paper will serve as a starting point in discussions to determine whether additional measurements of inputs are needed and where they should be done.

RECOMMENDATION 8. It is not clear how NEXRAD maps are being analyzed or incorporated into trend detection by other investigators.

RESPONSE 8. The NEXRAD data are being transformed into a form directly applicable to initialization and calibration of the AARPS model by Mattocks and will be made available to the SFWMD hydrology modelers. They are not suitable for trend detection until a much longer time series is developed. Their primary utility is to obtain proper total rainfall given the relatively sparse gauge network and highly contagious distribution associated with convective rainfall events.

RECOMMENDATION 9. There appears to be a deficiency of ongoing communication among groundwater investigators (UM, FSU, USGS).

RESPONSE 9. This is not a concern because it does not appear that groundwater will be a factor in answering any of the five questions that guide the Program.

RECOMMENDATION 10. A cooperative effort should be taken by modelers and field scientists to address the question of flow over mudbanks during high tide.

RESPONSE 10. An extensive program to measure characteristics of flow across the banks is not yet warranted. The immediate interest of ecologists is in estimates of residence time for each of the basins that make up the bay. Residence time is needed in order to interpret observations related to nutrient cycling and the dynamics of plankton blooms. The ability of the models to reproduce residence times in the bay, i.e. the aggregate result of flows over banks and in the channel, can be assessed initially from their ability to reproduce the observed characteristics of salinity variation.

RECOMMENDATION 11. There is a need to integrate hydrographic measurements (UM), water quality data (FIU) and oceanographic observations to clearly describe the physical regime inside/outside of Florida Bay proper.

RESPONSE 11. Integration of these data is a component of ongoing work in several areas, such as the development of ecological performance measures, attempts to formulate a dynamic model for plankton blooms, in the development of the water quality model, etc.

RECOMMENDATION 1. Attention should be paid to the question of the use of organically-bound nutrients by microbes and algae and to what degree do these nutrients transverse the Bay through channels and mudbanks.

RESPONSE 1. One new project, involving Dr. T. Bianchi (Tulane Univ.) and R. Jaffe (FIU), is being funded to study microbial use of DOM in the southern Everglades. This work will also provide information on the chemical composition of DON and DOP flowing toward the bay. No similar work is being done in Florida Bay at this time. However, a new project has been funded to address another major biogeochemical gap in our program - nitrogen cycling. Dr. M Kemp (UMD) has been funded to quantify rates of nitrogen cycling within the bay, including the measurement of nitrification, denitrification, and nitrogen fixation rates.

RECOMMENDATION 2. The actual impact of large quantities of oceanic water with low nutrient concentrations on the biota is still unresolved.

RESPONSE 2. Agreed. The plankton bloom workshop planned for May will examine this issue in the context of their influence on the onset and persistence of recent plankton blooms. The question of ecosystem response to this source of nutrients will also be addressed as part of efforts to construct a seagrass model, which is now underway.

RECOMMENDATION 3. Both laboratory and field experiments using carbonate sediments from the natural system should go forth to provide essential geochemical information.

RESPONSE 3. A series of laboratory studies using field collected natural carbonate sediments is currently being conducted by Zhang and Millero to investigate the issue of phosphate desorption/desorption and consequent bioavailability.

RECOMMENDATION 4. Rate measurements of nutrient recycling by algae throughout the Bay are needed.

RESPONSE 4. The plankton bloom workshop will help to define what is known and what remains to be determined in this area.

RECOMMENDATION 5. The hydrodynamic model should be completed ASAP and the linkage with the water quality (WQ) model clearly demonstrated.

RESPONSE 5. Development of the hydrodynamic model was completed last fall by WES, and a final report on this effort is available. WES also reported success in developing the algorithm necessary to link the two models. Progress on the hydrodynamic model is being reviewed by the Physical Sciences Team.

RECOMMENDATION 6. The various components of the WQ model should be explained and discussed with geochemists and ecologists working in the Bay.

RESPONSE 6. Initial development of the water quality model is scheduled to be completed this fall. The WES modelers have indicated their desire to convene a workshop to present this model and its components to the field scientists in the program when work has progressed further.

RECOMMENDATION 7. The Model Evaluation Group (MEG) should evaluate whether FATHOM, RMA-10, and CE-QUAL-ICM provides information useful to scientists over scales of interest and decisions made to further peer-review, change, or drop these models.

RECOMMENDATION 8. The PMC needs to define specific goals, set definite time lines, and formalize the needed process research support to aid the models.

RESPONSE 7 and 8. Progress since the last Florida Bay Science Conference has brought both the RMA-10 and FATHOM models to the point where they are capable of making predictions of the salinity field. Before the next Florida Bay Science meeting, both of these models will be used to project salinity conditions in the bay for a suite of scenarios. This exercise is described in a separate document. The model results will provide information will provide a preliminary assessment of the sensitivity of the bay to changes in freshwater supply contemplated for Everglades restoration. As well, this exercise will produce insights into how well the models operate when used to simulate variation in water quality over the temporal scales relevant to ecological processes.

Separately, documentation of the FATHOM and the RMA-10 models is being sent to members of the Physical Science Team for technical review. The CEQUAL-ICM is still under development; therefore it is premature to attempt a technical review at this time. This review will provide comments and questions back to the model development teams for their response. As well, the reviewers are being asked to especially consider issues raised by the MEG in their report, and the review comments will be provided to the MEG. The intent of conducting the first round of technical review without direct involvement by the MEG is to encourage more direct communication between the modelers and the field researchers than has occurred so far.

Both the scenario exercise and the technical review by the Physical Science Team demonstrate an improvement in communications and cooperation between the PMC and the Corps of Engineers that has been achieved over the last 6 months.

RECOMMENDATION 1. The role of the microbial loop and benthic-pelagic exchanges have not been adequately addressed.

RESPONSE. Recent progress on Question #3 has been hampered by shifts in agency support for this research. After funding much of the early work, the Florida DEP has discontinued its support for research in this area, as well as in other areas of the Program. NOAA has increased its support for plankton research to compensate, and a major emphasis of NOAA’s program this year has been in support of field studies of bloom dynamics.

A renovated Plankton Research Team (see team report) will conduct a workshop in May aimed at formulating conceptual models describing the interaction of factors responsible for the onset, persistence and decay of bloom events.

RECOMMENDATION 2. Process studies leading to a full understanding of the formation and persistence of algal blooms in Florida Bay remains lacking.

RECOMMENDATION 3. A special focus on the causes and interrelationships of seagrass die-off, algal blooms and pelagic and benthic grazing needs to be undertaken.

RECOMMENDATION 4. Understanding nutrient dynamics and their relationships to phytoplankton production is of central importance in evaluating whether there has been an ecosystem shift, and if so, what the causes are.

RECOMMENDATION 1. It is imperative that high quality data assessing the single and combined effects of salinity and temperature an seagrass survival and growth become available soon.

RESPONSE 1. Problems with the existing mesocosm facility are recognized by the Program and the South Florida Water Management District, which owns the facility. Inquiries by the PMC have so far been unsuccessful in locating an alternative facility for this work. Recent progress in toward the development of a seagrass model for Florida Bay is focussing attention of the Seagrass Research Team on the critical questions that require a mesocosm facility. There is optimism that the limitations of the present facility can be worked around for the experimental work that will be required. The South Florida Water Management District is committed to making the present facility work. Based on the expressed interests of the Seagrass Research Team, the PMC has advised the South Florida Water Management District to issue an RFP for further work in the existing facility.

RECOMMENDATION 2. The extent to which Labyrinthula causes seagrass mortality under various field conditions, or whether it was a causative agent in the initial or subsequent seagrass die-off should be addressed ASAP.

RESPONSE 2. This research is entering an experimental phase that will address these concerns.

RECOMMENDATION 3. Expanded study of the dynamics of the "urchin outbreak" on Syringodium and the significance of this event are needed ASAP.

RESPONSE 3. Studies of the urchin infestation are on going. This particular occurrence appears to be self-limiting, and the present "herd" is expected to die-out.

RECOMMENDATION 1. The research team strategy is too broadly focused and open ended and is not based on realistic schedules and needs to be more specific and focused.

RESPONSE 1. The Department of Interior has received a proposal for work that addresses these concerns, and this proposal is currently being reviewed for possible funding.

RECOMMENDATION 2. A retrospective analysis, which takes into account other supportive long-term knowledge of pink shrimp, should be assessed.

RESPONSE 2. It is anticipated that the PMC’s efforts to develop ecological performance measures this year will make use of the 30-year record of data on pink shrimp.