Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Human Activities and a Changing Climate in Louisiana
EPA Grant Number: R829420E01Title: Human Activities and a Changing Climate in Louisiana
Investigators: Dagg, Michael
Institution: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: June 10, 2002 through June 9, 2004 (Extended to June 9, 2006)
Project Amount: $74,534
RFA: EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) (2001) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: EPSCoR (The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research)
Objective:
The objectives of the research project were to: (1) develop a coordinated, multi-institutional research and education program addressing aspects of global change most relevant to Louisiana; and (2) enhance Louisiana’s capability for understanding and predicting the effects of climate change on state ecosystems, culture, and economy.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
- How likely is it that fish populations will successfully adapt to global warming? Dr. Paul Klerks, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
- Saltwater intrusion on the Gulf Coast: an assessment of the interactions of salinity stress, genetic diversity, and population characteristics of fish inhabiting coastal marshes. Dr. Paul Leberg, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
- Modeling impacts of climate change on wetland ecosystems. Dr. Vibhas Aravamuthan, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
The focus of these three projects on coastal Louisiana serves to emphasize the potentially dramatic impacts of climate change on Louisiana’s coastal environment. Separate final reports have been submitted for each of these SEER projects.
Supplemental activities designed in support of these SEER projects and to enhance Louisiana’s awareness of coastal climate change issues were accomplished under the Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP) component of this project.
Seminars
Several seminar speakers were brought to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) to address aspects of climate change and coastal environments. Funds from this U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) project supplemented the regular LUMCON seminar series. Speakers were selected by the project principal investigator (PI) and seminar coordinator (Michael Dagg) to address issues broadly related to coastal change in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Presentations most pertinent to this project included:
- Dynamics of Phytoplankton Community Structure and Photosynthesis in Relation to Wind Forcing in a Coastal-Estuarine Mixing Region. Dr. Stephen Lohrenz, University of Southern Mississippi.
- Numerical Simulation of River Plumes. Dr. Robert Hetland, Texas A&M University.
- Carbon Flows and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Mississippi River Plume Described by Inverse Analysis. Mr. Greg Breed, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
- Geographic Variation in Plant-Herbivore Interactions in Coastal Salt Marshes. Dr. Steven C. Pennings, University of Houston.
- Chemical Biomarkers as Indicators of Organic Matter Preservation in Coastal Margins. Dr. Thomas Bianchi, Tulane University.
- Copepod Effects on CDOM in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Juanita Urban-Rich, University of Massachusetts at Boston.
- Air-Sea CO2 Fluxes in Ocean Margins and the Mechanism Behind. Dr. Wei-Jun Cai, University of Georgia.
Development grants for students and postdoctoral fellows were proposed. This program was modeled after a similar one run by Louisiana’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration EPSCoR program. An advertisement throughout state universities resulted in awards being made to four students in Year 1 of the project and one additional award being made in Year 2. Funds for the extra awards were taken from the intern program (see below), for which there was poor response. Development grants funded were:
- Ms. Shaye Sable, a doctoral student at Louisiana State University under the supervision of Dr. James Cowan, for a project titled, “Response of Larval Fish to Dimethylsulfide (DMS): An Experiment to Determine a Possible Effect of Climate Change on Fisheries Production in the Gulf of Mexico.”
- Mr. Brian Milan, an M.S. student at Louisiana State University under the supervision of Dr. Richard Shaw, for a project titled, “Fisheries Utilization of Smooth Cordgrass and Black Mangrove Edge Habitat: Implications of Global Climate Change.”
- Mr. Lawrence Febo, a doctoral student at Louisiana State University, for a project titled, “Investigating the Sediment Archives of Catahoula Lake, Louisiana.”
- Ms. Melanie Caudill, a doctoral student at Louisiana State University under the supervision of Dr. Richard Shaw, for a project titled, “The Role of Hydroperiod and Stem Densities in Determining Fisheries Utilization in Black Mangrove and Smooth Cordgrass Salt Marshes: Implications for a Changing Landscape.”
- Dr. Jinchun Yuan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Mississippi and now at Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, for a project titled, “Seasonal and Inter-Annual Variations in Sea Surface Chlorophyll on the Louisiana and Texas Shelf and Correlation to Fluvial Nitrate Flux and Hypoxia.”
A summer internship program for students from any of Louisiana’s universities to work for 10-week summer periods with any of the SEER PIs was proposed. Response to the advertisement was poor and no candidates were selected in Year 1. In Year 2, an additional advertisement throughout the state universities yielded the same results. Funds proposed for this program were used to support additional development grants (above).
Travel grants for non-SEER faculty and students to attend national meetings and give a presentation relevant to our global change theme were proposed. Two student awards were made: one to attend the annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Quebec City in August 2003, and one to attend the meeting of the Estuarine Research Federation in Seattle in September 2003. Both students made presentations in sessions relevant to global change.
A scientific workshop was proposed for the middle of Year 2. This was originally planned as an independent workshop, but eventually was coordinated with another workshop on a closely related theme being led by Dr. Brent McKee at Tulane University in New Orleans. This workshop, titled RiOMAR II—River-Dominated Ocean Margins: Linkages with Global Climate Change, was held in New Orleans in November 2004 and involved 41 scientists from throughout the United Sates and Canada and several from Europe and Asia. Partial funding for that workshop was provided by this EPA/EPSCoR project.
The conference addressed the following five questions:
- What future global changes are anticipated/predicted that will impact major river systems?
- What are the important processes affected by global change and the corresponding system responses that should be examined?
- What are the most promising/innovative measurement and modeling techniques that can be used to examine the important processes and evaluate responses to global change?
- What is the best approach to examining the linkages between major river systems and global climate change?
- What are the next steps towards formulating a Science Plan and having funded research projects to address RiOMAR issues.
See http://www.tulane.edu/~riomar/ Exit for further details.
Remaining funds originally allocated to the workshop were used to partially fund an additional workshop titled An International Symposium of Coastal Ecosystem Responses to Changing Nutrient Inputs from Large Temperate and Sub-tropical Rivers, with Emphasis on Comparison Among the Mississippi (USA), Pearl (China), Yangtze (China), and Rhône (France) Rivers. This international symposium, co-sponsored by the China National Science Foundation, was held in Xiamen, China in spring 2005. A special volume of the scientific journal Continental Shelf Research will result from papers presented at this symposium. See http://mel.xmu.edu.cn/meeting/ Exit for further details.
Partial support was requested for a science writer to prepare articles for newsletters, newspapers, and gray literature publications. An appropriately skilled person was not found in spite of two open rounds of job advertisements. A brochure on Climate Change and Louisiana’s Coast is nearly complete and will be printed in-house and distributed with other LUMCON educational and outreach materials.
Conclusions:
Most of the original objectives of this project were successfully accomplished. The balance between the various project elements was not fully realized as originally expected and some aspects received greater emphasis while others received less. These shifts were primarily dictated by circumstances. For example, there was poor response to advertisements for interns so funds originally planned for that category were shifted to development grants. Overall, climate issues in Louisiana are becoming much better appreciated, in part because of this project and in part because of general awareness throughout society. This issue still requires a lot more attention, both locally and nationally.
Supplemental Keywords:
climate change, coastal, Louisiana, LA,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Air, Geographic Area, Hydrology, climate change, State, Environmental Monitoring, Atmospheric Sciences, Ecological Risk Assessment, wetlands, fish habitat, watershed, global change, Louisiana (LA), coastal ecosystems, aquatic ecology, global warming, land and water resources, climate variabilityRelevant Websites:
http://mel.xmu.edu.cn/meeting/ Exit
http://www.tulane.edu/~riomar/ Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.