Mangroves are on the move. Read first-hand testimonies from scientists tracking the trees in Florida’s tropical forests, where climate change is forcing two ecosystems to collide. A summer 2012 project of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the University of Maryland.
Mayda Nathan/University of Maryland
–Mayda Nathan, graduate student (University of Maryland)
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1065098. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
by Dan Gruner
A manatee samples red mangrove leaves and its cigar-shaped propagules. Photo: John Parker
Even with the tremendous leaps we’ve gained from satellite imaging, Google Earth and other technologies, experience on the ground (or in the water) is irreplaceable. Our team must build a network of sites along the lagoons and estuaries of the Florida coast, and ultimately the globe, to understand the causes and consequences of shifts in the range of tropical mangrove species. On this day we probed several mangrove and salt marsh estuaries along the Indian River Lagoon. We tested technologies allowing real-time exploration of satellite imagery while comparing that imagery to landscape and vegetation features we saw on the ground. This was GPS on steroids! By allowing us to optimize site selection and replicate sites all along the coast, these technologies will help us characterize the vegetation of the estuaries and how they’ve changed over time.
But that day our attention was drawn away from new technology to something much older (about 50 million years old): manatees. Click to continue »
Mangrove research is not glamorous work.
Researchers Lorae Simpson, Jake Bodart, Nancy Shipley and Mayda Nathan ford across a mangrove-surrounded pool. (Brian Thompson)
Our team has descended on the Florida mangroves this summer to study the insects that live in and on them, the fish that find shelter among their submerged roots, the dietary choices of the crabs that live in their branches, their reproductive biology, and the interactions between the three mangrove species found here and their marsh plant neighbors. Taken together, our efforts will contribute to a better understanding of the communities that assemble as mangroves spread north into the northern Florida saltmarshes.
This means we spend some days struggling through thickets of mangroves, waist-high patches of pickleweed, and neck-deep pools of brackish water. In building up a research program, we’re building a lot of character, too.
More stories from the mangroves >>
-Mayda Nathan, graduate student (University of Maryland)
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1065098. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
by Cora Johnston
Red Lionfish. Photo: Jacek Madejski
by Dan Gruner
Black mangrove. Mangroves like this tolerate hot, salty environments partly by exuding excess salt onto their leaves. (John Parker)
I don’t think anyone believes that will happen. However, it does seem that mangroves are moving up in latitude, encroaching into more temperate salt marsh systems dominated by cord grass and other herbaceous species. Although mangrove systems are in steep decline worldwide because of coastal development, aquaculture and other human activities, climate change and other factors may be increasing their total geographic range.
Why would this happen? What would this mean for coastal ecosystems in the USA and globally? And what would it mean for the billions of people who live within 20 miles of a coastal zone, or the billions more who rely on some form of oceanic protein?
Aerial view of Mangal Cay in the western Caribbean – just one of many mangrove havens Ilka Feller has explored.
As global temperatures rise, mangrove forests from the southeastern US are pushing farther north. Scientists don’t know how long, how fast, or what the exact consequences will be, but images from NASA satellites – and $1.3 million – will help them find out.
Ilka Feller, senior ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, will lead the effort to track more than 100 miles of Florida mangrove forests encroaching on their northern neighbors, the salt marshes. Feller has been studying mangroves for almost 20 years, keeping tabs on their progress in Florida, Panama, Belize and Australia. The new grant is one of 15 NASA-sponsored projects that will combine satellite data with field work to give scientists a bird’s-eye view of climate change.
