{"id":25294,"date":"2018-06-25T11:58:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T15:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=25294"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:55:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:55:47","slug":"leaving-a-mark-on-ecosystems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=25294","title":{"rendered":"Leaving a mark on ecosystems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By monitoring water quality in the state\u2019s estuaries, Carolina researchers are better understanding the lasting effects that hurricanes have on ecosystems beyond immediate flooding and storm surge.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ast-oembed-container \" style=\"height: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Leaving a mark on ecosystems\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dU7IHo3ZE_w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>What happens to the water quality in coastal estuaries during a hurricane?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the question researchers in Hans Paerl\u2019s lab are trying to answer. Specifically, researchers are looking at the impacts of microscopic algae on the functioning of the estuaries along North Carolina\u2019s coast and at how hurricanes impact the algae.<\/p>\n<p>By monitoring water quality in the state\u2019s estuaries and the impacts of major storms on the water, researchers are better understanding the lasting effects that hurricanes have on ecosystems beyond immediate flooding and storm surge.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, Paerl\u2019s lab has a unique opportunity to study those effects of hurricanes. The 35 named storms that have hit the North Carolina\u2019s coast in the past two decades have given the researchers a wealth of data.<\/p>\n<p>Longevity of monitoring data is rare when it comes to water quality, so much so that researchers from other parts of the country use the information collected by the Paerl lab team for their own studies.<\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath of a hurricane, researchers have found visual changes that happen every time, such as the water changing from translucent to opaque as terrestrial matter is brought in by the storm. But many of the nonvisual effects are less consistent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we looked across these 35 storms, the impact seemed to vary storm by storm by storm,\u201d said Nathan Hall, a research associate in the lab. \u201cSo, if you compared for any one parameter \u2014 these 35 storms against the baseline \u2014 there are very few parameters that showed a significant increase or decrease after the storms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Their findings have potentially significant ramifications.<\/p>\n<p>The Paerl lab team has found that levels of dissolved organic carbon in the water always increase after a storm.<\/p>\n<p>Most of that organic carbon is then broken down by bacteria and released as carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere, turning it into a greenhouse gas, Hall said. A severe hurricane could potentially make estuaries a net-source of carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n<p>The second consistent finding revolves around the microalgae studied at the lab. During a hurricane, water and nutrients rush up the estuary and essentially flush phytoplankton from the upper estuaries into the lower estuaries. Researchers have found no change in the biomass of the algae, but their location changes with each storm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason we care about how the phytoplankton are moved around by the storms is because they can shade out seagrasses, lead to low oxygen problems that cause fish kills or kill fish directly by producing toxins,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n<p><em>By Aaron Moger, University Communications<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By monitoring water quality in the state\u2019s estuaries, Carolina researchers are better understanding the lasting effects that hurricanes have on ecosystems beyond immediate flooding and storm surge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":25288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,29,33,17,21,34],"tags":[24,25,574,286,36,37,40],"class_list":["post-25294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-general","category-media-news","category-natural-sciences-mathematics","category-news","category-news-archive","tag-carolina","tag-college-of-arts-sciences","tag-hans-paerl","tag-marine-sciences","tag-unc","tag-unc-arts-and-sciences","tag-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48722,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25294\/revisions\/48722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}