Plum Island Ecosystems LTER

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The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER site was established in 1998 and consists of a linked watershed-marsh-estuarine system located north of Boston, Massachusetts. The brackish and saline wetlands of the PIE site form the major portion of the “Great Marsh”, the largest intact marsh left on the northeast coast of the United States

  Our overarching goal for PIE III is to understand how external drivers, ecosystem dynamics, and human activities interact to shape ecological processes in a mosaic of coastal landscapes and estuarine seascapes.    Understanding how landscapes and seascapes evolve and change, and how those changes control ecosystem processes, is both a fundamental science question and a critical management question for coastal policy makers.   We continue to study the role of temporal change and variability in climate, sea-level rise and human activities on ecological process in our long-term monitoring but in this round we have initiated new activities that explore how these changes affect the way that ecosystems and habitats within the landscape are arranged and connected.   These include: 1) examining how the connectivity of terrestrial areas to the river network alters biogeochemical cycles, material flows, consumer biodiversity, and mobility of fish, and  2) how tidal marsh area, configuration, and elevation (relative to mean sea level) change with rising sea level and changes in sediment delivery and what impact does this have on biogeochemical cycles and consumers.