debor042

Somewhere down the road ecology evolved from this: To something like this: As a member of the Seagrass Ecosystem Research lab here at Florida International University I am, by default, a researcher in two long-term monitoring projects.  The first is the FCE-LTER seagrass monitoring project and the other is a seagrass monitoring project in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary .  Both datasets have resulted in mounds and mounds of data throughout the years.  As a side project to my dissertation I arrogantly decided to conquer said data mounds and turn out some ground-breaking revelations about benthic community structure in South Florida.  There's just one problem:  I am buried in MOUNDS of data!  To analyze these data, it turned out, would be much more complicated than just getting the R code ( R is a stats program that hates me, but it's free so I put up with the abuse!) correct so the program will tell me what I want to know.  Here is the first...

For Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) research in the Seagrass Ecosystems Lab, we venture out into Florida Bay every two months to do a survey of the submerged aquatic vegetation (seagrasses and macroalgae).   As I mentioned in my last post ( Florida Bay:  Beneath the Surface ) Florida Bay is a honeycomb of basins, which creates different habitat types.   These different habitats, specifically the type and density of vegetation on the floor and sediment type (and many other factors that are beyond the scope of this post), attribute to the color of the water.   In a single LTER trip, we see water ranging from deep blue to teal, green, and even brown!    After 2 years of running the LTER project for our lab, I am still amazed by the dynamic nature of Florida Bay on the surface and below. Darker blue waters as we travel to Sprigger Bank. At Sprigger Bank:  notice the greenish patch to the left.  There is sparse shoal grass (Halodule wrightii...

Florida Bay consists of mud banks so intertwined it takes an experienced boater (or a great GPS chart tracker, if you’re me) to successfully navigate across the bay.   Because flow is somewhat restricted by these mud banks, the basins have developed into unique habitats making each dive of the FCE-LTER seagrass sampling project quite different.   At each of the LTER sites within Florida Bay, we estimate percent cover of all seagrass species and many calcareous green algal species, as well as red, brown, and other green algae.   We monitor water quality over time via nutrient analyses in seagrass and calcareous green algal tissue, and we collect data on salinity, temperature, light penetration, and water turbidity.   Data are located at www.fiu.edu/~seagrass . Sprigger Bank is our monitoring site located at the western border of the bay where salinity is more stable than that of eastern regions.   Sprigger Bank is characterized by dense turtle grass ( Thalassia ...