Exploring the Woods under the Water: Dr. Bradley Peterson Examines the Resilience of Great South Bay
Remillard J and Gottschalk Druschke C. 2017. Exploring the Woods under the Water: Dr. Bradley Peterson Examines the Resilience of Great South Bay
Dr. Peterson’s research provides crucial information that NPS can use to make informed decisions in managing park resources. Dr. Peterson and his team of student researchers collect data on water temperature, salinity, levels of light reaching the bottom of the bay, turbidity (the density of sediment and other particles suspended in water), and levels of dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll. To monitor seagrass, they track a variety of indicators to learn where seagrasses are growing and how, recording, for instance, the size of individual plants, the percentage of area covered by seagrasses, and the density of plant mass in specific locations. By the time Hurricane Sandy struck the U.S. east coast, on October 29, 2012, Dr. Peterson had amassed water quality and seagrass data spanning six years, which includes a year’s worth of water quality data collected by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey as part of the same I&M study.
- Type
- Resource Brief
- Authors
- Remillard, Jamie; Gottschalk Druschke, Caroline
- Date of Issue
- 2017-10
- Units
- FIIS , NCBN
- Keywords
- FIIS, Fire Island National Seashore, Great South Bay, Hurricane Sandy, NCBN, Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, seagrass, Stony Brook University, water quality