Keys to Tomorrow: Chris Gobler studies storm impacts, resilience, and restoration opportunities in coastal parks
Remillard J, Gottschalk Druschke C, Gulick S. 2019. Keys to Tomorrow: Chris Gobler studies storm impacts, resilience, and restoration opportunities in coastal parks
Many of the enduring visual impressions of Hurricane Sandy are those of destruction—inundated subway stations, shredded boardwalks, flooded beach roads. The storm created great difficulties for many coastal communities from Florida to Maine. But Hurricane Sandy had another, less acknowledged facet—its power to alter degraded ecosystems and to move coastal communities toward resilience. For Chris Gobler, whose ancestors came though Ellis Island and settled in coastal Manhattan and Brooklyn, bearing witness to coastal change is an experience stitched into his heritage. He understands how the various faces of Hurricane Sandy sometimes seem at odds with one another. Now a fourth generation Long Islander himself and a professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, Gobler examines water quality change in coastal ecosystems and its effects on keystone species, or species that have an outsized influence over the fate of an ecosystem. Ultimately, Gobler hopes to refine our understandings of complex storm impacts and illuminate sound options for restoration and resilience.
- Type
- Resource Brief
- Authors
- Remillard, Jamie; Gottschalk Druschke, Caroline; Gulick, Sarah
- Date of Issue
- 2019-03
- Units
- FIIS , GATE , NCBN
- Keywords
- 2260108, acidification, algal blooms, brown tides, Chris Gobler, coastal parks, FIIS, Fire Island National Seashore, GATE, Gateway National Recreation Area, Great South Bay, hard clams, Hurricane Sandy, Jamaica Bay, NCBN, New York, Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, oysters, salinity, sea level rise, Stony Brook University, storm impacts, storm surge, submerged aquatic vegetation, temperature, the concentration of phytoplankton, water quality