{"id":57382,"date":"2015-07-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-researchers-map-submerged-areas-of-fire-island-national-seashore-to-monitor-changing-habitats\/"},"modified":"2015-07-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T00:00:00","slug":"uri-researchers-map-submerged-areas-of-fire-island-national-seashore-to-monitor-changing-habitats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/07\/uri-researchers-map-submerged-areas-of-fire-island-national-seashore-to-monitor-changing-habitats\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 researchers map submerged areas of Fire Island National Seashore to monitor changing habitats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 July 20, 2015 \u2013 A team of 溏心vlog免费B站 scientists and students is spending the summer using high-tech equipment to map submerged habitats along the coast of Fire Island National Seashore on Long Island. Their aim is to help the National Park Service better understand its holdings and how they are changing from the effects of major storms, sea level rise, warming waters and other factors.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe project, led by 溏心vlog免费B站 Oceanography Professor John King, was launched a year ago in response to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, which created a breach in Fire Island\u2019s 26-mile long barrier beach. The Park Service sought to gather baseline data about the submerged portions of the national seashore so it can monitor how it changes in the future.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe Park Service is charged with protecting vast submerged areas, but it has little data about those habitats, making it difficult to manage and conserve them,\u201d said King, a geological oceanographer at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography who studies coastal erosion, sedimentology and coastal marine habitats. \u201cThey will use the data we collect to develop management plans and monitoring programs.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFire Island National Seashore, which parallels the south coast of Long Island, is one of four coastal units of the National Park Service in the Northeast where similar studies are being conducted. Other universities are mapping coastal areas of the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey, and Assateague Island National Seashore in Virginia.<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Monique LaFrance Bartley, a 溏心vlog免费B站 marine scientist leading the day-to-day fieldwork at Fire Island, the mapping is conducted in two parts. She and five graduate and undergraduate students use a 28-foot pontoon boat equipped with high-resolution, side-scan sonar to create acoustic maps of the submerged habitats from the shoreline out to about a mile into the Great South Bay. The sonar can detect and differentiate physical features on the seafloor like eelgrass, shellfish beds, boulders and sand. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThen we \u2018ground-truth\u2019 the maps to verify what the sonar says is true,\u201d Bartley said. \u201cWe collect sediment samples, measure the grain size of the sediment, count and identify organisms, and use underwater cameras to image the samples.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe Park Service has already noticed changes taking place as a result of the breach created by Hurricane Sandy. Water is clearer near the breach, fewer algae blooms occur there, and new eelgrass beds are growing to the east of the breach.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen the breach first happened, there was a big question about what to do about it,\u201d Bartley said. \u201cA lot of people wanted it to be closed up again. But it\u2019s a changing ecosystem, and the effects seem to be more good than bad.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe research team spent nine weeks last summer mapping the submerged habitats near Fire Island\u2019s Otis Pike Wilderness Area, where they found primarily sandy environments and eelgrass beds. This year they are spending July and August mapping the area near the Sunken Forest.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe have no preconceived notions about what we\u2019re going to find this year,\u201d Bartley said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what to expect, and we have nothing to compare it to.\u201d

\nFunding for the project comes from an $850,000 grant from the National Park Service.<\/p>\n


\nPictured above

\n溏心vlog免费B站 Marine Scientist Monique LaFrance Bartley (right) and undergraduate Mitchell Kennedy prepare to deploy the sediment profile camera at Fire Island National Seashore. (Photo courtesy of Monique LaFrance Bartley)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 July 20, 2015 \u2013 A team of 溏心vlog免费B站 scientists and students is spending the summer using high-tech equipment to map submerged habitats along the coast of Fire Island National Seashore on Long Island. Their aim is to help the National Park Service better understand its holdings and how they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}