Shorelines

A pattern that existed since the age of dinosaurs is now disappearing—with profound implications for ecosystems

by Christian Elliott, Northwestern University

Sitting on couches at an Airbnb in Montreal for the 2018 Marine World Conference, Jon Lefcheck, the Coordinating Scientist for the MarineGEO program at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and his colleagues started tossing around the sort of questions scientists do in their free time. Questions like, is there a general pattern between what animals eat and how big they are?

Four years later, that conversation has culminated in a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, with the most comprehensive analysis yet of the relationship between vertebrate animals’ body sizes and their places on the food chain. The study reaches across taxonomic groups, ecosystems and 150 million years of evolutionary history. Humans, they found, are starting to disrupt a longstanding balance.

by Deva Holliman

To celebrate Arbor Day this month, we’re taking a closer look at forest research with Shelley Bennett, head technician of SERC’s Ecosystem Conservation Lab. Much of the lab’s efforts focus on immediate threats, like invasive species and rising temperatures. However, a new project seeks to uncover what happens when a forest functions normally—including the insects and microbes that feast on its leaves. Learn more in this Q&A. Edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: To start off, could you talk about the project you’re working on?

Shelley: Sure! I’m working on a project [regarding] the interactions between insects, microbes, and trees in the chronosequence forest plot here at SERC. We’re looking at different age stands of beech, sweetgum and tulip poplar trees….Younger stands tend to have more tulip poplar and sweetgum, whereas older stands start to have beech trees. We’re looking at seedlings, saplings and mature trees of the three species and assessing leaf damage by herbivores and microbes.….We’re also sampling the insect community in a subset of the plots and looking at how the interactions between insects and trees change as forests naturally age.

by Caitlyn Dittmeier, Smithsonian Working Land and Seascapes intern

At 6 a.m., bird songs chime a new day of field work for Amy Hruska, a postdoc with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and Chesapeake Working Land and Seascapes ecologist. Recording the species for every tweet and chirp she hears for 20 minutes is hard work. But Hruska is more concerned about a looming silence. Since 1970, 1 billion birds have disappeared from North American forests, leading scientists like Hruska to study the effects of habitat loss on local populations.

Forests once covered 95% of the Chesapeake Bay landscape. But after centuries of intensive farming and development, approximately half of that forest has been cleared. The remaining forest exists in insular patches, bordered by croplands, roads and cities. Scientists understand that fragmentation threatens native wildlife, but they know far less about its impacts over a long period of time.

Curious to know more, Hruska launched a new project investigating how changing land use has transformed the Bay landscape over the past 40 years. To do so, she’s revisiting the same forest patches that SERC researchers studied decades ago.

by Kristen Goodhue

California is no stranger to extreme events. Record-breaking wildfires or heat waves make headlines nearly every year. But in the winter of 2017, another type of extreme devastated underwater life: A series of “Pineapple Express” storms from Hawai’i created extreme rainfall not seen since the state began keeping records in 1895.

“Several atmospheric rivers came and dumped water on the Bay area,” said Chela Zabin, a marine biologist at the San Francisco branch of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and lead author of a new study on climate extremes.

“For Northern California, 2017 was the wettest winter on record,” said Andy Chang, a SERC biologist and coauthor. “Given our changing climate, record-breaking, once-in-a-lifetime wet years like 2017 are now projected to occur much more often.”

The downpours wreaked havoc on an oyster and eelgrass restoration site that Zabin, Chang and a team of ecologists had been working on since 2012, as part of the San Francisco Bay Living Shorelines Project. The water’s saltiness plummeted to five parts per thousand—a level Olympia oysters can withstand for days, but not months. When the team checked the restoration later in the spring and summer, not a single oyster had survived. However, all was not lost. The following fall, oysters began growing there again naturally. New oyster larvae had drifted into the barren restoration, likely from more central parts of the bay that were not as affected by the extreme rainfall.

How the appearance of a nonnative shrimp in the Chesapeake unearthed a 160-year-old naming mystery

by Kristen Goodhue

It seemed like such an innocent catch: two peppermint shrimp, netted in the lower Chesapeake Bay during the 2013 Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey. But their discovery would send Smithsonian biologist Rob Aguilar spiraling down a rabbit hole of century-old field notes, museum fires and World War II bombings. In a new study, Aguilar and SERC’s Fisheries Conservation Lab finally unraveled a taxonomic knot over a century in the making.

by Marissa Sandoval

This is the final article in a 3-part series about ballast water. Part 1 provided a brief history of ballast water and its accompanying invasive species threats. Part 2 illustrated how scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are researching technology to prevent invasions and keeping an eye on current ones. This article shows how SERC scientists are working to predict vulnerable spots for ballast water invasion, using shipping networks and commercial trade information.

They say you can never step into the same river twice, since the water’s always running. The same could be said about waters on the shore. Not only do currents sweep the waves to and fro, but new seawater is also constantly being introduced from the ballast tanks of globetrotting ships.

It’s estimated that foreign ships discharge over 180 million metric tons of ballast water off U.S. coasts each year, according to the National Ballast Information Clearinghouse (NBIC). In each ton comes a chance for aquatic critters from foreign ports to invade new shores.

Coastal Organisms Thrive on Floating Plastic Debris in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

by Kristen Goodhue

Watch: Marine biologist Linsey Haram describes how she studies life floating on plastic pollution that nonprofits and citizen scientists collect from the Pacific Ocean.

Coastal plants and animals have found a new way to survive in the open ocean—by colonizing plastic pollution. A new commentary published Dec. 2 in Nature Communications reports coastal species growing on trash hundreds of miles out to sea in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, more commonly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

Floating debris with a mix of coastal organisms (the yellow podded hydroids Aglaophenia pluma) and open-ocean organisms (Planes crab and gooseneck barnacles) collected in 2018 by the Ocean Cleanup in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. (Credit: The Ocean Cleanup)

“The issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement,” said Linsey Haram, lead author of the article and former postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). “It’s creating opportunities for coastal species’ biogeography to greatly expand beyond what we previously thought was possible.”

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Mangroves are powerful players in fighting climate change, able to store more carbon per unit area than some tropical forests. Above-water roots like these help some mangroves survive in flooded, low-oxygen environments. (Credit: Jonathan Lefcheck/SERC)

by Kristen Goodhue

Mangrove forests try the grit—and grace—of even the most seasoned field ecologist. Flies. Heat. Mazes of trip hazards, from roots and dwarf mangroves jutting aboveground. Suction-cup mud that can pull researchers in up to their thighs.

“If you’re not careful, you can sink,” warned Hannah Morrissette, a postdoc with the Smithsonian Marine Station. Morrissette has explored mangroves in the Dominican Republic and Belize. She’s developed a healthy respect not just for their obstacles, but what they can offer society. “Trying to put a value on these is almost impossible, because of the breadth of their services,” she said.

It’s true: When it comes to protecting coastal economies and drinking up carbon, few ecosystems can compete with mangroves. But few ecosystems make scientists work harder to get the data to prove it.

“I would say, as somebody who’s six foot four, that mangroves are a short person’s game,” said Jonathan Lefcheck, a marine biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Morrissette and Lefcheck were part of a larger team that journeyed through Belize this September. Dubbed the “Belize Blue Carbon Team,” they joined dozens of Belizean scientists to visit nine mangrove forests in under a month. Their mission: Bolster Belize’s efforts to fight climate change, by uncovering how much carbon its mangrove forests can lock away.
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by Kristen Goodhue

Carrie Bow Cay, the Smithsonian’s tropical island field station in Belize. (Credit: Zachary Foltz/Smithsonian Marine Station)

Caribbean corals have been through a rough few decades. Between the 1970s and early 2000s, the region’s hard coral coverage dropped over 80%, largely fueled by climate change and harmful algal growth from overfishing and pollution. But on the island of Carrie Bow Cay in Belize, biologists discovered signs of a possible comeback.

Stony corals on the island’s outer rings—known as forereefs—more than doubled in just five years. A new study published this fall in the Nature journal Scientific Reports documents the recovery.  Click to continue »