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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Selected Works

2016

Florida Bay

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Response Of Diatom Assemblages To 130 Years Of Environmental Change In Florida Bay (Usa), Anna Wachnicka, Laurel Collins, Evelyn Gaiser Mar 2016

Response Of Diatom Assemblages To 130 Years Of Environmental Change In Florida Bay (Usa), Anna Wachnicka, Laurel Collins, Evelyn Gaiser

Evelyn E. Gaiser

Coastal ecosystems around the world are constantly changing in response to interacting shifts in climate and land and water use by expanding human populations. The development of agricultural and urban areas in South Florida significantly modified its hydrologic regime and influenced rates of environmental change in wetlands and adjacent estuaries. This study describes changes in diatom species composition through time from four sediment cores collected across Florida Bay, for the purposes of detecting periods of major shifts in assemblage structure and identifying major drivers of those changes. We examined the magnitude of diatom assemblage change in consecutive 2-cm samples of …


Correspondence Of Historic Salinity Fluctuations In Florida Bay, Usa, To Atmospheric Variability And Anthropogenic Changes, Anna Wachnicka, Evelyn Gaiser, Laurel Collins Mar 2016

Correspondence Of Historic Salinity Fluctuations In Florida Bay, Usa, To Atmospheric Variability And Anthropogenic Changes, Anna Wachnicka, Evelyn Gaiser, Laurel Collins

Evelyn E. Gaiser

Florida Bay is a highly dynamic estuary that exhibits wide natural fluctuations in salinity due to changes in the balance of precipitation, evaporation and freshwater runoff from the mainland. Rapid and large-scale modification of freshwater flow and construction of transportation conduits throughout the Florida Keys during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries reshaped water circulation and salinity patterns across the ecosystem. In order to determine long-term patterns in salinity variation across the Florida Bay estuary, we used a diatom-based salinity transfer function to infer salinity within 3.27 ppt root mean square error of prediction from diatom assemblages from four ~130 …