Estuarine Ecology Lab, Western Washington University

04/09/2023

Here's a recent paper out of our lab. Poppe, K. M and J.M. Rybczyk. 2022 . Assessing the future of an intertidal seagrass meadow in response to sea level rise with a hybrid ecogeomorphic model of elevation change. Ecological Modelling, v. 469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2022.109975

Our simulations revealed that, in order for sediment to accumulate fast enough to keep pace with predicted rates of SLR in eelgrass meadows here, the TSS concentrations in the water column would be too high for eelgrass to thrive (i.e., not enough light).

09/11/2021

A new paper from our lab came out today: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257244

The title is a spoiler and it's open access, so you can read and download it for free. This is an especially data-rich study and we've been tracking the restoration trajectory here for ten year consecutive years. I think that many will find it useful. It includes above and below-ground biomass and carbon data, sediment characteristics with depth, sediment accretion rates (calculates using both SET's and Pb-210) and carbon sequestration rates for low marsh, high marsh and restored habitats in the Stillaguamish Delta.

Tidal marshes have been recognized globally for their ability to sequester “blue carbon” but there is still a need for studies investigating the marsh response to restoration, particularly in the Pacific Northwest United States. Here we report carbon stocks and accumulation rates for restored an...

08/13/2021

Low tide at the Nooksack Delta. A lot of Zostera japonica colonizing the mudflats.

04/17/2021

Low tide, this morning. John's River Estuary, Gray Harbor, Washington.

04/13/2021

Live and in person in the Stilly estuary. I'm teaching my Estuarine Ecology class F2F (face to face) this quarter. We are mostly outside and the weather gods have been kind thus far. Feels....normal.

03/18/2021

Stilly restoration site 2019

03/16/2021

We are finally seeing the first of our negative day time tides (less than 0 ft MLLW) for the year. For an estuarine field ecologist like me, it marks the beginning of spring. Pictured here is a tombolo off Chuckanut Island, WA that reveals itself only on the low tides. We don't see it during the day in winter. Today was the first time I've seen it this year. Also, this is one of my favorite places in the world.

11/09/2020

We've been sitting on this, waiting for the official announcement, although it's not really a secret anyway. Congratulations Shannon and Katie. The fellows must be doing actionable climate science research. Although not restricted to estuaries, The NWCASC fellowship program at WWU is administered through the Estuarine Ecology Lab via a USGS grant.

Katie Ewen's NW CASC research will focus on Identifying Mount Rainier’s Critical Cold-Water Zones and Protecting Native Fish Populations in a Changing Climate. Katie’s research seeks to understand the impacts of Mount Rainier’s accelerated glacial melt on critical cold-water fish habitat. ...

10/30/2020

Some especially late blooming Douglas Aster at the Chuckanut Village, WA, pocket estuary.

10/16/2020

I'm attempting to teach part of my Wetlands Ecology class face to face this quarter. Two students here at the Cherry Point pocket estuary where we measure the effects of different stressors on plant species distribution and net primary production.

08/26/2020

Hurricane Laura is bearing down on the Chenier Plains of SW Louisiana with sustained winds now approaching 150 mph. Pictured here is the coastal town of Holly Beach (the Cajun Riviera) before and after Hurricane Rita in 2005. Laura is following a remarkably similar trajectory. I fear that there will be nothing left of Holly Beach after landfall. Most of this area is still wetlands, which is great for storm buffering, but Lake Charles, 40 miles inland, will still take a major hit.

08/09/2020

https://bayareamonitor.org/article/wheres-the-dirt-scientists-surveying-sediment-in-salt-marshes/?fbclid=IwAR033ocLh9VTbIAYHUabYzLqw1Vj1fDWHm2D2ENgoVbtBu69HnrArqJjSF8

When Brenda Goeden first started working on mud, silt, and sand in the San Francisco Bay two decades ago, dredgers and contractors couldn’t get rid of all the sediment they excavated fast enough. “They’d dump it in the ocean because that was cheapest,” recalled Goeden, the Sediment Program M...