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Research at Narragansett Bay, RI
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The research sector of the Narragansett Bay Reserve supports and conducts high quality research and monitoring with a focus on NOAA's mission to protect, restore, and manage use of coastal and ocean resources through an ecosystem approach to management. The goals of the research sector are: to conduct and provide opportunities for original research in coastal and estuarine systems; to track changes in the Reserve and within the Narragansett Bay estuary to help forecast environmental quality and trends; to protect Narragansett Bay by encouraging and assisting partners in research, monitoring, and science-based ecosystem management; and to provide managers, scientists, and educators with scientific and technical information that fosters research, education, stewardship, and informed decision making.
Some specific ongoing research and monitoring projects conducted by the Narragansett Bay Reserve staff and local partners include:
- Quantifying short- and long-term patterns in water quality conditions in Narragansett Bay as part of the national System-wide-monitoring-program and local Bay Window program;
- Quantifying ecological responses to salt marsh restoration projects;
- Establishing marshes within Narragansett Bay Reserve as reference sites for long-term ecological monitoring and to compare with impacted marshes;
- Assessing the value of urban estuarine habitats for wading birds;
- Comparing different foraging habitats and characterizing diet composition of wading birds in Narragansett Bay;
- Assessing the effects of different types of residential development strategies on breeding songbird communities;
- Quantifying spatial and temporal trends in invasive crabs in Narragansett Bay, and assessing the effects of physical and biological factors on crab abundance and distribution;
- Developing underwater video techniques to rapidly assess distribution and cover of submersed aquatic vegetation, and;
- Using dataflow to rapidly map surface water quality conditions in shallow coves and embayments around Narragansett Bay.
The current research priorities at the Narragansett Bay Reserve are:
Species interactions and relationships to physical, chemical, economic and social processes
- Changes in species and guild composition, including invasives, and interactions among species and the physical and chemical environment
- Habitat conservation, restoration, and biota use
- Data synthesis, hindcasting and forecasting
Monitoring, modeling and prediction of coastal habitat and ecosystem processes
- Quantitatively examine and model the primary factors that affect fisheries, productivity and water quality
- Coupling of Reserve ecosystem dynamics to estuarine and regional dynamics including responses to the effects of climate change
Last Updated on: Friday, October 30, 2009
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