Life Sciences Commons^™

Linking The Abundance Of Estuarine Fish And Crustaceans In Nearshore Waters To Shoreline Hardening And Land Cover, Ms Kornis, D Breitburg, R Balouskus, Donna M. Bilkovic, La Davias, Rochelle D. Seitz, Et Al.

VIMS Articles

Human alteration of land cover (e.g., urban and agricultural land use) and shoreline hardening (e.g., bulkheading and rip rap revetment) are intensifying due to increasing human populations and sea level rise. Fishes and crustaceans that are ecologically and economically valuable to coastal systems may be affected by these changes, but direct links between these stressors and faunal populations have been elusive at large spatial scales. We examined nearshore abundance patterns of 15 common taxa across gradients of urban and agricultural land cover as well as wetland and hardened shoreline in tributary subestuaries of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Coastal Bays. …