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R/P-40
Can Increasing Stocks of Oysters in Chesapeake Bay Serve to Improve Water Quality?
Principal Investigator:
Roger I.E. NewellStart/End Year:
1996 - 1998Institution:
Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental ScienceCo-Principal Investigator:
Jeffrey C. Cornwell, Jon H. Tuttle, Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental ScienceTopic(s):
- Oysters
Description:
We will test the hypothesis that water quality in eutrophic estuaries can be substantially improved as a consequence of the feeding activity of bivalves. These organisms serve to remove large quantities of phytoplankton and hence may reduce the amount of organic material settling beneath the estuarine pycnocline where its degradation causes hypoxia. We will determine if the rate and form of nitrogen regenerated from oyster biodeposits in aerobic waters differs from when the same amount of plankton biomass is degraded through anaerobic microbial processes. This research is pertinent to both the Environmental Studies and Fisheries and Aquaculture programmatic areas.
Funding Start Year
1996
Funding End Year
1998
Related Publications:
Magnuson, A; Harding, LW; Mallonee, ME; Adolf, JE. 2004. Bio-optical model for Chesapeake Bay and the Middle Atlantic Bight. Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science61(3):403 -424. doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2004.06.020. UM-SG-RS-2004-09.
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Featured Fellow
Nina Santos
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For her dissertation, she is focused on small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids – an understudied yet important part of many estuarine and coastal food webs.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
