Environmental Variability in West Lake Mangroves: A Climatology Report

• Main Author: Spencer, Gretchen M
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: NSUWorks 2020
• Subjects: Climate Change; Mangroves; Nearshore; Ecosystems; Temperature; Deoxygenation; Variability; Climatology; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/117; https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=hcas_etd_all

Sea level rise, ocean acidification, increasing sea temperatures, and deoxygenation are all consequences of climate change that are impacting the ocean. However, nearshore environments are being affected by climate change at varying rates compared to the open ocean. Mangroves, environments which already see wide variety in their daily environmental conditions due to the natural physical and biogeochemical processes which occur in them, are habitats that are expected to change at a faster rate than other ecosystems. The goal of this study was to create a baseline understanding of the daily, monthly, and seasonal changes occurring in a local mangrove habitat, to help understand what impacts climate change may have on the system in the future. Using a stationary Smart Spotter buoy in West Lake (Hollywood, FL), temperature and dissolved oxygen was measured to create hourly climatologies of the lake. Daily and seasonal trends were found for both temperature and percent dissolved oxygen. The summer, or wet season, shows overall warmer sea surface temperatures and lower average amounts of oxygen. The winter, or dry season, shows overall lower sea surface temperatures and higher amounts of oxygen. The results indicate the solar irradiance plays a large part in controlling the sea surface temperature, where biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) influence the percent dissolved oxygen. More studies on nearshore systems, like mangroves, need to be conducted to better understand how natural diel changes will be impacted by large scale environmental changes to protect the organisms living in those habitats.