How do scientists measure long-term ecosystem change? Continual monitoring of environmental conditions is critical to understanding how ecosystems respond to acute and chronic events, such as an abnormally rainy summer season (acute) or consistent increases in air and water temperature (chronic). Without long-term datasets, “important context to understand drivers of change and impacts of disturbance events would not be possible” state authors of a recently published article, Advancing Estuarine Science and Management Through Long-Term Research and Monitoring in the U.S. National Estuarine Research Reserve System.
Great Bay is only one of thirty National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERR) located across the country- from Alaska to the tip of Florida- and each one collects long-term water quality data. These data include water temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll fluorescence, and more. Water quality data (collected every 15 minutes) is gathered alongside weather data such as air temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure through the NERR System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP). Combined, this information provides “a holistic view of the environmental conditions within estuarine ecosystems”, according to the authors arguing for the importance and uniqueness of this unified yet geographically dispersed data collection system.
Kaitlin Reinl from the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve led a team of authors who stress that the NERR System itself is uniquely positioned to support long-term research and monitoring due to continual funding from NOAA and state partners, technical support and training, and data management structures such as the Centralized Data Management Office (CDMO).
These SWMP datasets are shared with research partners investigating a multitude of scientific questions within these estuarine systems. In Great Bay, a research team out of the University of New Hampshire used ten years of SWMP data to create a model that forecasts concentrations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacteria in shellfish that causes illness in humans when ingested. This is a concern since oyster aquaculture is a growing business in the Great Bay Estuary. Case studies like these exhibit why monitoring water quality and weather, even if there is no specific research question motivating this data collection at the onset, is valuable for not just the progress of science, but for the health and happiness of the community as a whole.
To read Rienl et al.’s article, visit: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JG008630
To learn more about Great Bay’s SWMP reports, visit our monitoring website: https://greatbay.org/science/monitoring/
Lauren White, Biologist
