Coastal Systems and Global Change
North Inlet is a sentinel site for global change research. This estuary is relatively free of the localized effects of pollution, eutrophication, land-use change, dredging, and myriad other anthropogenic impacts. The North Inlet landscape, biology, chemistry and physics are changing. These are documented by unparalleled long-term collections of data that span more than five decades.
Primary Focus Areas
- Estuarine and coastal oceanography
- Groundwater chemistry and hydrology
- Coastal and estuarine geology
- Biogeomorphology
- Wetlands Ecology
- Graphic information systems
- Biogeochemistry
Food Webs
Estuarine systems involve complex interactions among organisms in both the water column and bottom sediments. Numerous factors, such as the needs and tolerances of the organisms, their chemical and physical environments, movements, and predator-prey or competitive interactions can influence the structure of biological communities and the success or failure of a species, including those of commercial value.
Primary Focus Areas
- Population and community dynamics
- Larval ecology and recruitment
- Algal ecology, physiology, and molecular biology
- Zooplankton ecology
- Fish ecology and genetics
- Invertebrate ecology
- Microbial ecology and molecular biology
- Ecology and physiology of marsh vegetation