Impact/Purpose:

The Office of Water, among others, will use the information provided by this research in support of scientifically based policies to protect societally important endpoints, such as fish, shellfish, and wildlife populations in coastal estuaries. It complements and extends the applications of the studies of effects of nutrient loading on aquatic vegetation.

Description:

Aquatic vegetation is one of the most widespread and important types of aquatic habitat, in part because of the exceptional productivity of the plants. Aquatic vegetation also strongly influences local physical and chemical habitat conditions of significance to fish and shellfish, including substrate type and stability, wave and current energy, and water quality. Our research will focus on evaluating the importance of habitat attributes of vegetated aquatic systems to the assessment endpoints of interest to society. Our research objectives are: to quantify the role of aquatic vegetated habitat in providing structure and life support functions (e.g., food and shelter) to selected and societally important fish, shellfish, and wildlife populations; to identify those attributes of habitat within vegetated aquatic systems that are key to sustaining societally important species, and to further determine the functional relationships between those attributes and the utilization of that habitat by primary and secondary (e.g., forage organisms) assessment endpoints; and to integrate the results of habitat-specific research results with other NHEERL habitat research that focuses on larger scale questions that range from localized among-habitat differences to the landscape and regional scale. To accomplish these objectives, we will identify and prioritize assessment endpoints identified as of societal value, assess key habitat elements for biota of vegetated aquatic systems, characterize the species (assessment endpoint)-habitat relationships, and quantify the consequences of alteration of vegetated aquatic habitats.

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