The National Estuarine Eutrophication Assessment (NEEA) is a tool for evaluating both current eutrophic condition and the effectiveness of management actions aimed at reducing eutrophic condition. Eutrophication is caused by excess nutrients and is expressed by symptoms such as increased ...

Salt marsh ecosystems are sensitive habitats that may be susceptible to oil and oil spill mitigation chemicals during clean up. This research project assessed the toxicity of three shoreline cleaners (SLC) in laboratory and mesocosm exposures, determined petroleum hydrocarbon distributions ...

Oceanographic features, such as eddies and fronts, enhance and concentrate productivity, generating high-quality patches that dispersive marine larvae may encounter in the plankton. Although broad-scale movement of larvae associated with these features can be captured in biophysical models, direct evidence ...

A large region of low-dissolved-oxygen bottom waters (hypoxia) forms nearly every summer in the northern Gulf of Mexico because of nutrient inputs from the Mississippi River Basin and water column stratification. Policymakers developed goals to reduce the area of hypoxic ...

The results from this study represent a snapshot of ecological condition in coastal waters of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne-Mississippi Sound two months after the passing of Hurricane Katrina. The comparison of ecological indicators before and after the hurricane suggests ...

The National Status and Trends Program is comprised of three nationwide programs: Benthic Surveillance, Mussel Watch, and Bioeffects. These programs are in place to observe estuarine and coastal waters nationwide to describe the current status and detect changes in the ...

Estuaries exhibit a large range in their responses to nitrogen loadings determined in part by characteristics of the driver, such as magnitude and frequency, but also by such intrinsic characteristics as physical/chemical factors (e.g., depth, volume, hypsometry, salinity, turbidity) and ...

This is the original (1992) Gulf of Mexico regional component of NOAA's Estuarine Living Marine Resources (ELMR) Project, a national database of ecologically and economically important fishes and invertebrates in the Nation's estuaries. The distribution and relative abundance are depicted ...

These unprojected (geographic coordinates) 3-Zone Average Annual Salinity Digital Geographies are based on analysis of long-term salinity data for 147 estuaries of the contiguous United States. Each estuary is subdivided into three zones between the head(s) of tide, and the ...

Human activities, especially increased nutrient loads that set in motion a cascading chain of events related to eutrophication, accelerate development of hypoxia (lower oxygen concentration) in many areas of the world’s coastal ocean. Climate changes and extreme weather events may ...