SGER Katrina: Responses of fish and crabs to nearshore habitat degradation in Lake Pontchartrain caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

2005年8月29日，卡特里娜飓风以四级飓风强度登陆新奥尔良南部。20 - 30英尺的风暴潮加上飓风带来的强降雨淹没了新奥尔良市的防洪系统堤坝和大型泵站。其结果是新奥尔良大都市内的许多地区遭到大规模破坏。这一破坏的很大一部分是直接造成的洪水夹带从庞恰特雷恩湖在大都市地区的一个较长的时期。2005年9月24日，路易斯安那州查尔斯湖附近的飓风丽塔（英语：Hurricane Rita）登陆，引发风暴潮，大都会区许多地区的防洪系统再次不堪重负，严重洪灾再次发生。除了卡特里娜飓风和丽塔飓风造成的前所未有的社会经济破坏之外，这将使风暴成为美国历史上最致命和经济代价最高的风暴，与风暴及其后果相关的环境破坏对该地区的生态系统造成了另一个伤害。对于近岸环境，卡特里娜飓风和丽塔飓风的最大影响将是将污染和富含营养的沃茨排入庞恰特雷恩湖。由于杰斐逊和奥尔良教区的沃茨造成了巨大的公共卫生风险，这些停滞的、充满污染物和营养物的水被直接排入庞恰特雷恩湖--其水量远远超过了对污染物和营养物水平没有限制的正常排放率。虽然州和联邦机构正在监测沃茨的污染物和营养水平，但很少有资源关注河口生态系统的生物影响。这个探索性研究（SGER）奖的小额赠款允许调查人员量化新奥尔良市和邻近的杰斐逊教区的洪水沃茨排放对近岸底栖无脊椎动物和底层鱼类群落的直接影响。调查人员将对底栖无脊椎动物和底层鱼类进行采样，以记录庞恰特雷恩湖南部近岸地区栖息地退化的时空程度。为了评估选定的移动的消费者（鱼和蟹）的功能反应，研究人员将采用一种新的声学遥测方法来记录栖息地的利用。 Powers在20世纪90年代初进行的一项关于排水渠对庞恰特雷恩湖南部近岸底栖生物群落影响的研究中收集的卡特里娜/丽塔飓风前的数据将用于与取样活动进行比较。这项拟议的研究将传统的底栖生态学与创新的新技术结合起来，以解决继世界上最大的自然灾害之后对海洋生态和保护至关重要的问题。灾难袭击美国沿海的近岸生态系统。研究生和本科生将参加实地工作和实地工作后的处理活动，从而使这一重大扰动事件成为海洋科学家的一个教育机会，他们将被要求对未来的灾害作出反应。

Intellectual Merit: On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall south of New Orleans as major category 4 hurricane. The 20 - 30 ft storm surge coupled with intense rain from the hurricane overwhelmed the city of New Orleans' flood control system of levees and large pumping stations. The result was large scale destruction of many areas within metropolitan New Orleans. A significant portion of this devastation was directly caused by the entrainment of flood water from Lake Pontchartrain in the metropolitan area for a prolonged period. On September 24, 2005 the flood control system was again overwhelmed in many portions of the metropolitan area by storm surge associated with landfall of Hurricane Rita, a category 3 hurricane, near Lake Charles, Louisiana and significant flooding reoccurred. In addition to the unprecedented socioeconomic devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which will make the storm the most deadly and economically costly in U.S. history, environmental damage associated with the storm and its aftermath poses another source of injury to the regions ecosystem. For the nearshore environment, the largest impact from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be the discharge of contaminated and nutrient rich waters into Lake Pontchartrain. Because of the enormous public health risk that flood waters in Jefferson and Orleans Parish posed, the stagnant, contaminant and nutrient laden water was discharge directly into Lake Pontchartrain - the volume of which far exceeded normal discharge rates with no restrictions on contaminant and nutrient levels. While state and federal agencies are monitoring waters for contaminant and nutrient levels, few have the resources to focus on the biological impact to the estuarine ecosystem. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) award allows the investigators to quantify the immediate impacts of discharge of flood waters from the City of New Orleans and adjacent Jefferson Parish on the nearshore benthic invertebrate and demersal fish community. The investigators will sample benthic invertebrate and demersal fish to document the spatial and temporal extent of habitat degradation in the nearshore areas of southern Lake Pontchartrain. To assess the functional responses of selected mobile consumers (fish and crabs), the investigators will apply a novel acoustic telemetry approach to document habitat utilization. Pre-Katrina/Rita data collected by Powers in the early 1990's in a study of the impact of outfall canals on nearshore benthic communities of southern Lake Pontchatrain will be used for comparison with the sampling activities.Broader Impact: The proposed study couples traditional benthic ecology with innovative new technology to resolve questions of critical importance to marine ecology and conservation in the wake of one the largest natural disasters to strike the nearshore ecosystem of the coastal US. Graduate and undergraduate students will participate in the field work and post-field work processing activities, thus allowing the use of this major disturbance event as an educational opportunity for marine scientists who will be called upon to respond to future disasters.