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Climatologically Forced Coherence Between Diverse Juvenile Populations In The Virginia Tributaries To The Chesapeake Bay, Thomas C. Mosca Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Long term trends in juvenile recruitment of oyster, bluecrab, and 24 species of finfish in a large temperate estuary (lower Chesapeake Bay, USA) are coherent across the three major tributaries (the Virginia rivers James, York, and Rappahannock). The driving force for these long term trends is geographically large in scale. Anomalous winters in the mid 1970's, with the warmest years on record followed immediately by the coldest, caused a severe perturbation in population dynamics. The extreme conditions caused the system to shift, with recruitment patterns following temperatures by a one year lag. Following this anomalous episode, smoothed mean winter water …