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Award: OCE-0746164
Award Title: CAREER: Assessing effects of ecosystem fragmentation using novel metrics of trophic structure as part of a broad educational outreach program
My CAREER Award provided an incredible opportunity to develop an integrated science and education program in The Bahamas. From a scientific standpoint, the award was initially targeted at exploring the role of ecosystem fragmentation, in this case the restriction of tidal flow to wetlands following construction of roads along coastlines. In this context, we generated a detailed understanding of the fundamental changes that fragmentation drives, including nutrient limitation regimes for primary producers, individual level trophic ecology, the evolution of aquatic taxa, food web structure, and various aspects of ecosystem function. Wetland restoration projects were one component of the project, providing a tool to directly involve communities in the scientific process. NSF support also allowed our team to establish research endeavors with respect to many other human impacts in the Bahamian coastal realm, including: -The role of coastal eutrophication. Bahamian waters are oligotrophic (nutrient poor), such that nutrient pollution from humans can cause dramatic changes in these systems. For instance, we demonstrated that human-derived nutrients drive blooms of a benthic jellyfish species. -Lionfish invasion. The lionfish invasion has been labeled as one of the top ten global environmental problems. Our team made a series of advances with respect to their role in the invaded range, including their establishment in estuaries, prey naivety to the novel predator, and aspects of their trophic ecology. -Overfishing. Much of our research utilized gradients of fishing intensity, or manipulations intended to simulate fishing pressure, to explore how human fishing pressure may be altering the function of coastal ecosystems. Finally, building from our work with nutrient limitation regimes in fragmented and unfragmented wetland systems, a fourth new research avenue emerged. In nutrient poor systems like The Bahamas, primary producer demand for limiting nutrients is high. In this context, the animals may be supplying nutrients through their excretion. These nitrogen- and phosphorus-based waste products are the very nutrients that plants and algae need to grow. To explore this dynamic, we have created a series of artificial reefs (using cinder blocks) in shallow seagrass beds. These new "reefs" serve to concentrate fish at very high densities – also concentrating their excretion of nutrients into the water. We have demonstrated how this dynamic serves to create a "hot spot" of biological and chemical activity within the seagrass ecosystems. These data provided an important stepping stone to our next major research direction (funded in 2013 by NSF) to explore the role of fish as nutrient sources across multiple sites in the Caribbean. Broader Impacts stemmed directly from the scientific research program. These products ranged from the international to local level, and I highlight some examples here. - I serve on The Nature ConservancyÆs Caribbean Program Advisory Board (one of two scientists), providing opportunities for conservation leadership across the region. The Nature Conservancy is at the forefront of the Caribbean Challenge – an effort to protect 20% of coastal and marine habitats throughout the Caribbean by the year 2020. Our research in The Bahamas (and now beyond) is embedded with this initiative, generating basic scientific data in current and proposed marine protected areas. -Development of the Abaco Scientist website (http://absci.fiu.edu/), a tool I hope will emerge as a "one-stop" site for scientific research in the country. The Bahamas hosts dozens of research programs, yet dissemination of results outside of the scientific community is often limited. I hope this site will provide a platform to better share on-going research with Bahamians, and well as the broader non-science community. -To date, we have conducted 4 major creek restoration projects in The Bahamas, all of which involved lo...