Detecting sedimentation impacts to coral reefs resulting from dredging the Port of Miami, Florida USA
| Autor: | Jocelyn Karazsia, Pace Wilber, Margaret W. Miller, Carolyn E. Groves, Thomas J. Moore, Kurtis Gregg, Sean Griffin |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Monitoring 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Fringing reef Impact assessment lcsh:Medicine Marine Biology Coral reef organizations 01 natural sciences General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Dredging Coral disease Adaptive management Reef 0105 earth and related environmental sciences geography geography.geographical_feature_category Resilience of coral reefs 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology General Neuroscience lcsh:R fungi technology industry and agriculture General Medicine Coral reef biochemical phenomena metabolism and nutrition Fishery Environmental science population characteristics Coral General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Coral reef protection Environmental issues with coral reefs Sedimentation Environmental Sciences geographic locations |
| Zdroj: | PeerJ, Vol 4, p e2711 (2016) PeerJ |
| DOI: | 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2146v1 |
| Popis: | The federal channel at Port of Miami, Florida, USA, was dredged between late 2013 and early 2015 to widen and deepen the channel. Due to the limited spatial extent of impact-assessment monitoring associated with the project, the extent of the dredging impacts on surrounding coral reefs has not been well quantified. Previously published remote sensing analyses, as well as agency and anecdotal reports suggest the most severe and largest area of sedimentation occurred on a coral reef feature referred to as the Inner Reef, particularly in the sector north of the channel. A confounding regional warm-water mass bleaching event followed by a coral disease outbreak during this same time frame made the assessment of dredging-related impacts to coral reefs adjacent to the federal channel difficult but still feasible. The current study sought to better understand the sedimentation impacts that occurred in the coral reef environment surrounding Port of Miami, to distinguish those impacts from other regional events or disturbances, and provide supplemental information on impact assessment that will inform discussions on compensatory mitigation requirements. To this end, in-water field assessments conducted after the completion of dredging and a time series analysis of tagged corals photographed pre-, during, and post-dredging, are used to discern dredging-related sedimentation impacts for the Inner Reef north. Results indicate increased sediment accumulation, severe in certain times and places, and an associated biological response (e.g., higher prevalence of partial mortality of corals) extended up to 700 m from the channel, whereas project-associated monitoring was limited to 50 m from the channel. These results can contribute to more realistic prediction of areas of indirect effect from dredging projects needed to accurately evaluate proposed projects and design appropriate compliance monitoring. Dredging projects near valuable and sensitive habitats subject to local and global stressors require monitoring methods capable of discerning non-dredging related impacts and adaptive management to ensure predicted and unpredicted project-related impacts are quantified. Anticipated increasing frequency and intensity of seasonal warming stress also suggests that manageable- but- unavoidable local stressors such as dredging should be partitioned from such seasonal thermal stress events. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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