Art Trembanis says mapping studies are vital to manage national park resources.
Marine scientists from throughout the region gathered at UD to share preliminary findings of a Superstorm Sandy mapping project.
Marine scientists from throughout the region gathered at UD to share preliminary findings of a Superstorm Sandy mapping project.
Hurricane mapping workshop.
UD works with National Park Service on Superstorm Sandy mapping study.
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11:38 a.m., March 18, 2016--Marine scientists involved in a Superstorm Sandy mapping project came together on University of Delaware’s Newark campus earlier this month to share preliminary findings about the storm’s effect on coastal and marine habitats.
The research was funded by the National Park Service and included field work at four locations along the East Coast over the last year:
Research Stories.
Hurricane mapping workshop.
Superstorm Sandy mapping teams presented their early findings to the National Park Service at a workshop held on UD's Newark campus March 3.
Engineering innovation.
A team led by Ajay Prasad in the University of Delaware's Center for Fuel Cell Research is partnering with Delaware startup Xergy on an innovative refrigeration system based on electrochemical compression.
Engineering innovation.
ECE Research Day.
Offshore wind in Massachusetts.
Biomedical research.
Cape Cod National Seashore, by the Center for Coastal Studies in Massachusetts;.
Fire Island National Seashore, by the University of Rhode Island;.
Assateague Island National Seashore, by the University of Delaware; and.
Gateway National Recreation Area, by Rutgers University..
The daylong workshop, hosted by professors Art Trembanis and Doug Miller in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE), enabled colleagues to share field work accomplishments and future plans, as well as discuss challenges associated with the work.
Mohsen Badiey, acting dean of CEOE, welcomed the participants to campus and thanked them for their continued collaboration.
“This is a new and promising area of research for our university, and we look forward to continued collaborations so we can be prepared to address future problems that might occur,” he said.
About the workshop
In October 2012, winds from Hurricane Sandy reached up to 90 miles per hour, tearing through the East Coast and resulting in over $70 billion dollars of damages to cities, towns and homes.
Areas within miles of Delaware like the Jersey Shore, Fire Island and Assateague Island in Maryland were among those affected. Significant erosion, overwash and coastal flooding were encountered in Delaware along both the Atlantic and Delaware Bay shorelines.
Though the visible damage was apparent, underneath the water’s surface, the bay and ocean seafloor and the organisms that live there were also severely affected.
Understanding how animals, plants or other organisms that live on the seafloor were affected by or recovered from the superstorm is key to predicting or anticipating effects in the future.
According to Trembanis, these studies are particularly valuable to the National Park Service in its mission of stewardship for our national parks.
“In order to manage the park resources it is critical to have both baseline and storm impact change maps of the extensive marine sector of the coastal parks. These studies have provided some of the first ever inventory of the biological and geological features in these parks,” said Trembanis, an associate professor of oceanography in the School of Marine Science and Policy.
In their mapping studies, diverse teams of scientists, graduate students, undergraduates and summer interns used side-scan and bathymetric sonar, a system used to detect objects on the seafloor, to observe the morphology and biology of the ocean or bay seafloor of their particular marine environment.
The teams also examined and classified the organisms within the different marine environments they studied. For example, side-scan imagery and photographs showed that the bay side waters contained more diverse species than the ocean side waters in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Some data even revealed interesting findings, such as mussel beds, sea grass and new, unidentifiable species that were not previously present.
Following the research presentations, Mark Finkbeiner from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management walked workshop participants through ways to incorporate the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) into their mapping studies.
CMECS is a complex framework for organizing information about coastal and ocean habitats. It helps researchers cross-reference data about previous storms and also enhances future research by providing recommendations for future projects.
Having an archived history of storms of this magnitude can help scientists to better predict the impacts that may be expected with future storms in a time of rising sea level and climate change.
"Everyone knows the extent storms impact the coast, but rigorous scientific data are remarkably rare. We need to make the most of every opportunity to collect and synthesize data, and to share it within the scientific community and the affected communities," said Miller, also an associate professor of oceanography in CEOE.
Article by Laura Bilash
Photos by Evan Krape.
