Urban Growth Impacts on Submerged Aquatic Vegetation, Restoration and Health in the Mobile Bay, Alabama Area (Formerly J1.5)

Urban growth is a relentless process both in the United States and around the globe. The environmental impacts of urbanization are far-reaching and affect a host of natural ecosystems. Although the affects of urban growth are manifested most prominently on the land, near-shore impacts on seagrasses and wetlands are perhaps more subtle from a visual perspective, but are equally as important from an ecological viewpoint as those changes that are evident on the landscape. Seagrasses may be viewed as the prospective “canary in the coal mine” as indicators of the health of near shore habitat. In coastal areas where rapid urbanization is occurring, particularly along the Gulf of Mexico, seagrasses and other aquatic vegetation are impacted by human induced stressors as well as changes in controlling factors such as temperature, salinity, or decreased light due to storm events or siltation. We are conducting a study in the Mobile Bay, Alabama area on how urban land cover change has, and will, affect the stressors and controlling factors that ultimately, impact seagrass health and restoration efforts. This project is part of a cooperative effort between the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, called the Gulf of Mexico Regional Collaborative (GoMRC). GoMRC's principal goal is to develop a data management system to address issues related to coastal wetlands restoration and harmful algal blooms that can be used be used to make sound environmental choices within a decision support framework. For the Mobile Bay area, we are using a Spatial Growth Model (SGM) to predict land cover and land use change for the Mobile metropolitan area out to 2030. Output from the SGM will be used in conjunction with a watershed hydrodynamic model, to evaluate how stressors and controlling factors (i.e., light, temperature, and salinity) affect seagrass and coastal wetland health along the near shore area adjacent to Mobile and Mobile Bay. These outputs will be incorporated into an ecological model that will in turn, be used to establish a restoration prioritization system that can be employed by decision makers for making prudent choices on how to restore and maintain seagrasses and submerged aquatic vegetation.