North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are ecological engineers that improve biodiversity and can improve the health of riparian ecosystems. Beavers are generalist herbivores with some evidence of species preference, utilizing woody material for both food source and dam construction. In the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon, a...
North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are ecological engineers that improve biodiversity and can improve the health of riparian ecosystems. Beavers are generalist herbivores with some evidence of species preference, utilizing woody material for both food source and dam construction. In the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon, a...
In March 2007, Craig Cornu (South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve), with the assistance of Laura Brophy (Green Point Consulting/Estuary Technical Group, Institute for Applied Ecology), John Bragg (South Slough NERR) and Derek Sowers (former South Slough NERR), developed the Pacific Northwest Estuarine Wetland Restoration Information Gaps Survey using the...
This document is a companion to the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds State of the Watersheds assessment (also accessible from the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds web site) which is a summation of newly collected and existing data which describe the environmental and socioeconomic conditions in the South Slough and Coastal Frontal...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) was developed to map U.S. wetlands comprehensively, following the Cowardin classification system. Wetlands are mapped by the NWI using small scale aerial photographs, but the inventory is not field checked in detail. The accuracy of this inventory has been questioned....
I tested the hypothesis that there is a correlation between inundation period and net primary production (NPP) in estuarine salt marshes through an observational experiment at South Slough National Estuarine Reserve, Oregon. I estimated primary production and inundation period for selected monotypic plant communities in (1) a naturally restored wetland...
A case history of ambient status and trends monitoring is presented for the South Slough estuary (southern Oregon). Datasets collected over the past decade by the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve / System-Wide Monitoring program (SWMP) include real-time measurements (every 5 min) of several meteorological parameters (air temperature, relative...
No hydrologic study has previously been made of the South Slough Estuary drainage basin. Yet, since freshwater runoff is paramount to an estuary, it would seem that such a study is vital to the proper understanding -- and hence management -- of the estuary. Therefore, a brief hydrologic analysis of...
An estuary, unlike the open ocean, is a dynamic system that is continuously undergoing changes in its physical and chemical properties. Marked fluctuations in the levels and kinds of nutrients, temperature, and salinity are normally found in estuarine environments. These changes occur principally as a result of freshwater intrusions, tidal...