Title: LTER/PIE: Dynamics of Coastal Ecosystems in a Region of Rapid Climate Change, Sea-level Rise, and Human Impacts
Principal Investigator: Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr.
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

Over the last 30 years, surface seawater temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have risen at three times the global average, rates of sea-level rise have accelerated, and precipitation has increased. Coupled with these changes in climate and sea level are substantial changes within the rapidly urbanizing watersheds that influence water, sediment, and nutrient delivery to marshes and estuaries. The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site is developing a predictive understanding of the response of a linked watershed-marsh-estuarine system in northeastern Massachusetts to rapid environmental change. This large-scale, interdisciplinary project will test how internal feedbacks within the marsh-estuary ecosystem influence the response of geomorphology, biogeochemistry, and food webs to three major drivers: climate, sea-level rise, and human alteration of the watershed. It will address three critical questions.

• How will the geomorphic configuration of the marsh and estuary be altered by changes in the watershed, sea-level rise, climate change, and feedbacks internal to the coastal system?
• How will changing climate, watershed inputs, and marsh geomorphology interact to alter marsh and estuarine primary production, organic matter storage, and nutrient cycling?
• How will key consumer dynamics and estuarine food webs be reshaped by changing environmental drivers, marsh-estuarine geomorphology and biogeochemistry?

Cross-system comparisons with other LTERs along gradients of temperature, species composition, tidal range, and sediment supply will further our understanding of long-term change in coastal ecosystems.