COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: RAPID 2017 Hurricane Irma: How do the effects of pulse disturbance vary with abiotic conditions, disturbance history, and proximity to a transition zone.

风暴潮通常被认为是与飓风相关的对生命和财产的最大威胁。对风暴潮生态系统影响的研究往往侧重于海滩等裸露的沿海地区。然而，向上游输送盐水可能会产生长期影响，并可能导致宝贵的淡水潮汐区减少，这些潮汐区为鱼类和野生动物提供栖息地，保护和改善水质，并储存洪水。这一点尤其重要，因为这些地区已经面临着海平面上升造成的上游盐水入侵造成的潜在损失。飓风厄玛于9月9日经过美国。2017年11月11日，在格鲁吉亚中部海岸造成了有史以来最高的风暴潮，并导致盐水比平时向上游移动得更远。国家科学基金会赞助的格鲁吉亚沿海生态系统长期生态研究项目（GCE-LTER）有长期的实验和监测计划，提供“之前”的数据和理解这一事件的影响的背景。研究人员预计，风暴潮带来的盐水将影响潮间带湿地生态系统的多个组成部分，包括植物、动物、水化学和土壤表面海拔。这项研究的结果将通过格鲁吉亚沿海研究理事会和格鲁吉亚沿海灾害实践社区与沿海管理人员分享。LTER的研究人员还将接待K-12教师，作为GCE校园计划的一部分，并与他们合作，将这种经验用于课堂。理解像飓风厄玛这样的扰动的影响是困难的，因为它们很难通过实验来操纵，并且在景观的不同部分可能会有不同的作用。 研究人员假设：1）风暴潮的影响在上游地区比下游地区更大，在潮汐新鲜地区影响最大，恢复时间最长; 2）根据历史，以前暴露于盐水的地区将显示出更大的影响;以及3）在不同湿地生境之间的交界处（即盐沼和半咸水沼泽植物之间的边缘），变化的可能性更大。他们将通过以下方式来检验这些假设：1）增加GCE-LTER湿地监测点的采样，这些监测点分布在沿着并从格鲁吉亚中部海岸向内陆延伸; 2）利用正在进行的GCE-LTER现场实验来确定先前的盐水干扰处理如何影响对飓风风暴潮的反应; 3）收集航空图像，使他们能够查看与风暴前地图相比植被类型的景观水平变化，并在预先建立的过渡地块中进行额外的采样。LTER研究人员推测，像这场风暴这样罕见但严重的事件是重新设置这些宝贵的潮间带湿地栖息地分布的主要场合。

Storm surge is often considered the greatest threat to life and property associated with a hurricane. Studies of the ecosystem effects of storm surge often focus on exposed coastal areas such as beaches. However, the upstream delivery of salt water can have long-lasting effects and can result in the decline of valuable freshwater tidal areas, which provide habitat to fish and wildlife, protect and improve water quality, and store floodwaters. This is especially important given the fact that these areas are already facing potential loss due to upstream salt water intrusion as a result of sea level rise. Hurricane Irma, which passed over the US on Sept. 11, 2017, caused the highest storm surge ever recorded on the central Georgia coast and resulted in salt water moving much further upstream than usual. The NSF-sponsored Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research Project (GCE-LTER) has long-term experiments and monitoring programs that provide "before" data and a context for understanding the effects of this event. The investigators anticipate that the salt water delivered by the storm surge will affect multiple components of intertidal wetland ecosystems, including plants, animals, water chemistry, and soil surface elevation. The results of this research will be shared with coastal managers through the Georgia Coastal Research Council and the Georgia Coastal Hazards Community of Practice. The LTER researchers will also host K-12 teachers as part of the GCE Schoolyard Program and work with them to use this experience in the classroom.Understanding the effects of disturbances like Hurricane Irma is difficult because they are hard to manipulate experimentally and can act differently on different parts of the landscape. The investigators hypothesize that: 1) the effects of the storm surge will be greater in upstream as opposed to downstream areas, with the greatest effects and longest recovery times in tidal fresh sites; 2) areas that have had previous exposure to salt water will show greater effects based on their history; and 3) changes will be more likely in areas that are at the borders between different wetland habitats (i.e. the edge between salt marsh and brackish marsh plants). They will test these hypotheses by 1) augmenting sampling of the GCE-LTER wetland monitoring sites, which are distributed along and extend inland from the central Georgia Coast; 2) taking advantage of an ongoing GCE-LTER field experiment to determine how prior saline disturbance treatments affect responses to the hurricane storm surge; and 3) collecting aerial imagery that will allow them to look at landscape level shifts in vegetation type compared to pre-storm maps, and doing additional sampling in pre-established transitional plots. The LTER researchers speculate that rare but severe events like this storm are the major occasions that re-set the distribution of habitats in these valuable intertidal wetlands.