Monitoring for resilience : detecting and responding to coastal wetland change at the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve

Climate change poses unprecedented potential for wetland loss and consequences to human communities. It is important to evaluate complex, multi-scale issues, such as climate change, in the context of social-ecological systems. One vital component to resilient social-ecological systems is monitoring—monitoring acts as an effective mechanism for detecting and responding to change in the environment. The primary objective of this thesis was to evaluate the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve’s monitoring efforts. Designated in 2006, the Mission-Aransas NERR belongs to a system of Reserves responsible for serving as researchers and educators for their coastal communities across the United States and Puerto Rico. The Mission-Aransas NERR participates in the System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP), a standard of the system, that collects long-term monitoring data to inform effective coastal management The SWMP consists of standard abiotic and toolbox-approach biotic data collection, sentinel monitoring of sea level rise impacts, and habitat mapping to monitor long-term changes and short-term variability in estuaries. The first objective was to examine climate-driven foundation species shifts in the salt marsh-mangrove ecotone. In the Mission-Aransas Estuary, there is a general shift toward wetland homogeneity. Wetland sites are becoming less diverse in both species’ richness and species evenness. Specifically, black mangrove shrubs and unvegetated covers are increasing in abundance at the expense of succulent and grass species at monitoring sites. The local macroclimate drivers, increasing minimum temperatures and precipitation changes, appear most influential on the estuarine emergent vegetation patterns. The second objective was to understand the role long-term monitoring data plays in management decision-making. Using qualitative methods, this section focused on Mission-Aransas NERR partners who may own or manage lands within the reserve boundaries. Conversations demonstrated the importance of working beyond boundaries to connect long-term monitoring data to management needs. While partners and other stakeholders have utilized water quality data given the freshwater inflow issues of the region, there is an increasing interest in analyzing and learning about non-NOAA funded vegetation, habitat mapping, and elevation data. Leveraging relationships and building community are solutions for connecting data to end users and demonstrating the value of long-term data for multiple use