Primary Task Objective: Characterize and model natural and anthropogenic changes in the physical structure of Tampa Bay and their impact on ecosystem health.
Description: Objectives of the TBEP CCMP action plan focus on identifying and minimizing anthropogenic impacts to the Tampa Bay ecosystem and the wildlife it sustains. Both natural and anthropogenic changes in the physical structure of the Tampa Bay region inevitably impact all ecosystem processes. While the effects of some anthropogenic impacts are well understood (e.g. nitrogen loading), others remain to be identified and characterized.
Characterizing urban evolution and resulting perturbations at each stage in history are critical for understanding how the ecosystem has responded to such changes, and for predicting how the ecosystem will respond in the future. Urbanization history and modeling, and hazard assessments provide the context within which to assess past, current, and future anthropogenic influences at the regional scale on all estuarine system components including surface and groundwater quality and movement, sediment quality and movement, and habitat distribution and health. An urbanization model will be developed as a foundation with which to couple historical and current data on changes in water and sediment quality, seagrass distribution, sediment accumulation rates and quality, wetland distribution, and geophysical structure. Several “coupled models” (e.g. urbanization/seagrass distribution) will identify the links between specific urban impacts and ecosystem change.
Regional scale and high-resolution maps will provide the physical context, background and baseline information for all other research, monitoring, and modeling activities. Elevation, geomorphologic, benthic habitat, and water quality mapping provide critical information for the development of circulation, hydrologic, sediment transport, and water quality components of an integrated model for predicting the system-wide impact of natural and anthropogenic changes in Tampa Bay. Information from seismic maps will be coupled with groundwater maps and research to aid in the identification and quantification of groundwater sources, and with sediment core information to aid in bay-wide reconstruction of historical and pre-historical changes identified in core analysis. Elevation and bathymetric maps will be linked to wetland and seagrass distribution data, and groundwater data to understand the impact and links between groundwater movement, elevation change, and habitat distribution and health.
Subtask Strategic Objectives: Six subtask strategic objectives address three focus areas of research:
- landscape and urbanization characterization and modeling,
- high resolution mapping, and
- hazard vulnerability.
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