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Gulf Coast Research Lab - Marine Botany |
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Fig 1. Comparison of 1m quadrat % cover of seagrass at the 6 sampling stations between 1998 and 1999. No seagrass was found at station LO4. |
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Chandeleur Islands Seagrass Monitoring |
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SAMPLING METHODS Methods for 1998 and 1999 followed the protocol described in: Multiscale Assessment of the Population Status of Thalassia testudinum A New Approach to Ecosystem Assessment (EPA Grant Number: R825145). Turtle-grass indicators were tested at nine sites in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, between the Chandeleur Islands in Louisiana and the Florida Bay at the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula. The field sampling program at all nine sites used three nested grids of tesselated hexagons. This spatially distributed, random sampling design provided the statistical advantages of random sampling and structured spatial coverage of sampling areas. At each of the nine sites, we sampled 30 stations at three spatial scales (small-2,500 m2, medium-25,000 m2, and large-250,000 m2). More details can be found at the EPA NCER website: http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/229 |
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RESULTS: |
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Fig 2. Comparison of 1m quadrat shoot density of seagrass at the 6 sampling stations between 1998 and 1999. No seagrass was found at station LO4. |
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Fig 3. Comparison of 1m quadrat canopy height of seagrass at the 6 sampling stations between 1998 and 1999. No seagrass was found at station LO4. |
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Fig 4. Comparison of 1m quadrat above-ground biomass of seagrass at the 6 sampling stations between 1998 and 1999. No seagrass was found at station LO4. |
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Dr. Patrick Biber Associate Professor, Coastal Sciences Gulf Coast Research Laboratory 703 East Beach Drive Ocean Springs, MS 39564 United States |
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Phone: 228 872 4200 Fax: 228 872 4204 E-mail: patrick.biber@usm.edu Webpage: |
