Publications

Background: Numerous studies have shown that bacteria form stable associations with host corals and have focused on identifying conserved “core microbiomes” of bacterial associates inferred to be serving key roles in the coral holobiont. Because studies tend to focus on only stony corals (order Scleractinia) or soft corals (order Alcyonacea), it is currently unknown if there are...

Over the last half century, climate change, coral disease, and other anthropogenic disturbances have restructured coral-reef ecosystems on a global scale. The disproportionate loss of once-dominant, reef-building taxa has facilitated relative increases in the abundance of “weedy” or stress-tolerant coral species. Although the recent transformation of coral-reef assemblages is...

We analyzed grain-size distributions (GSDs) from a time-series of sediment samples to evaluate sediment transport following anthropogenic sand-berm emplacement at the northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana. End-member analysis (EMA) was applied to compare the end-member (EM) GSD of a known sediment source to GSDs from surrounding environments and characterize the physical redistribution...

Storm surge and large waves combine to erode beaches, cause marsh and coral decay, and inundate low-elevation areas, resulting in hazards to coastal communities and loss of natural resources. The USGS, in collaboration with NOAA, is developing a real-time system to provide ∼ 6-day forecasts of total water levels (TWLs) combining tides, storm surge, and wave runup. TWL is compared with...

Early coastal dune erosion predictions are essential to avoid potential flood consequences but most dune erosion numerical models are computationally expensive, hence their application in Early Warning Systems is limited. Here, based on a combination of optimally sampled synthetic sea storms with a calibrated and validated XBeach model, we develop a surrogate model capable of producing...

Shoreline variability over timescales ranging from days to decades is examined at NASA-Kennedy Space Center on the Atlantic coast of Florida. Three sources of shoreline position data are utilized to complete this analysis: hourly video-image observations, monthly Real Time Kinematic GPS observations, and historical aerial imagery dating back to 1943. We find that shoreline positions tend...

Satellite derived shorelines are extracted using the Google Earth Engine API for Landsat and Sentinel satellites from 1984 through 2018. These shorelines are evaluated against existing surveys and show satellite-derived breach shorelines are in good agreement with directly-observed shorelines and capture the trend of the Fire Island wilderness breach evolution. Results of this study show...

Ocean acidification is projected to inhibit the biogenic production of calcium-carbonate skeletons in marine organisms. Antarctic waters represent a natural environment in which to examine the long-term effects of carbonate undersaturation on calcification in marine predators. King crabs (Decapoda: Anomura: Lithodidae), which currently inhabit the undersaturated environment of the...

High‐biomass blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense occur most summers in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA, posing a recurring threat to ecosystem health. Like many dinoflagellates, P. bahamense forms immobile resting cysts that can be deposited on the seafloor—creating a seed bank that can retain the organism within the ecosystem and initiate future blooms when cysts germinate...

The Florida Coastal Mapping Program, a partnership of state and federal agencies, has a goal of having modern, consistent, high- resolution sea-floor data for all of Florida’s coastal zone in the next decade to support a myriad of coastal zone science and management applications. One of the early steps in the implementation process is to prioritize and justify mapping needs. This is...

The decline in living coral since the 1970s has conspicuously slowed reef construction on a global scale, but the related process of reef erosion is less visible and not often quantified. Here we present new data on the constructional and deconstructional side of the carbonate-budget equation in the Florida Keys, U.S.A. We documented Orbicella spp. calcification rates at four offshore...

A range of computer science methods under the heading of machine learning (ML) enables the extraction of insight and quantitative relationships from multidimensional datasets. Here, we review some common ML methods and their application to studies of coastal morphodynamics and sediment transport. We examine aspects of ‘what’ and ‘why’ ML methods contribute, such as ‘what’ science...