In this thesis, I investigate the organization of eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) and mesograzer communities across local and regional scales in three upwelling- influenced estuaries located along the Oregon coast, USA. Eelgrass ecosystems are an important source of primary production in estuarine systems, providing numerous ecosystem services, including nursery habitat...
Sea-level and ice-sheet databases have driven numerous advances in understanding the Earth system. We describe the challenges and offer best strategies that can be adopted to build self-consistent and standardised databases of geological and geochemical information used to archive palaeo-sea-levels and palaeo-ice-sheets. There are three phases in the development of...
Modern technology has provided many new opportunities in medicine, one of which is improved learning through simulation. One of the newest incarnations of robotic simulation dolls is the Victoria S2200 produced by Gaumard scientific company. With the recent surge of technological advancement in simulation dolls there has been little research...
Microplastics are widely distributed in aquatic environments. The term ‘microplastics’ encompasses a wide array of particles with unique polymer constituents, morphologies, and sources, such as automobile tire tread. Tire wear particles (TWP) can end up in waterways near densely populated municipalities, where they can interact with aquatic biota. Studying the...
Understanding the ecological role of Pacific oyster aquaculture (Crassostrea gigas) and eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) as important habitats in US Pacific Northwest estuaries is critical for management and regulatory decisions. The oyster aquaculture industry is currently restricted by regulations concerning impacts of their activities on Z. marina. This seagrass is...
Eelgrass (Zostera marina) provides critical ecosystem functions and services and is a vital biogenic habitat on Washington’s marine aquatic reserves but its placement at the land-sea interface leaves it vulnerable to multiple environmental and anthropogenic stressors. In this study, published scientific literature is examined to identify thresholds of environmental stressors...
The role that anthropogenic and natural habitats in estuaries play in long-term population trends for Oregon’s nearshore marine fishes is poorly understood, in part due to limited temporal sampling. One important nearshore marine group is northeastern Pacific rockfishes (Sebastes spp.), which are highly diverse, with around 96 documented species, and...
Estuaries are an important ecological link between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems, but are also subject to a variety of human pressures. Along the West Coast of the United States, shellfish aquaculture is one extensive use of estuarine tidelands. Specifically, Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) aquaculture has been practiced for almost...
Mangrove forests store more organic carbon across ecosystem carbon pools than most other coastal and forested ecosystems, and are subject to high global rates of deforestation. For these reasons, they are recognized as prime candidates for inclusion in climate change mitigation strategies. However, the ecological drivers of regional and micro-scale...
Community structure and function in ecosystems are dependent on top‐down and bottom‐up factors, which vary across local, regional, and temporal scales. In estuaries of the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast, eelgrass (Zostera marina) ecosystems are exposed to latitudinally varying oceanographic inputs in the form of ocean upwelling. Previous research suggests that...