Product Description
Includes maps and preliminary action plans for the conservation and management of the Greater Charlotte Harbor Estuary and surrounding watersheds. ... Read more

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Discusses the management plan for the Charlotte Harbor Watershed including Peace River, Myakka River, Lemon Bay, Gasparilla Sound, Cape Haze, Pine Island, and the Tidal Caloosahatchee River. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) and deposit- and suspension-feeding bivalves (Macoma balthicaand M. mitchelli) play important roles in the food web of Chesapeake Bay and may serve as indicators of ecological health, particularly in small subestuaries where conditions may be strongly linked to watershed and local factors. We sampled 19 subestuaries of Chesapeake Bay to test hypothesized relationships of blue crabs and bivalves with salinity (a regional indicator), watershed- and local-scale land use, and local habitat and water quality. We divided the subestuaries into five land-use categories: forested, developed, agricultural, mixed agricultural and mixed-developed. We measured water quality, sediment class, physical habitat and adjacent land use/land cover at each of six stations within each subestuary. Fyke nets were employed to estimate blue crab abundance and size-structure, while cores were used to estimate bivalve densities and biomass. Classification and regression tree (CART) analysis indicated that 51% of the variance in blue crab abundance was explained by salinity, watershed land use and shoreline marsh habitat. Crab abundance was greatest at salinities >16 ppt, but in lower salinities crabs were most abundant along marsh shorelines in forested and mixed land-use watersheds. Juvenile crabs <85 mm were more strongly associated with shoreline marshes, particularly in subestuaries with forested and mixed land-use watersheds. Macoma spp. were similarly associated with shoreline marshes but mainly in muddy bottoms at moderate-to-high salinities; however the best CART model only explained 25% of variance in bivalve abundance. These results were consistent with our predictions that shoreline wetlands and watershed land use may have important effects on these taxa along the estuarine salinity gradient, and are consistent with hypotheses based on previous descriptive and experimental research linking blue crabs and deposit-feeding bivalves to habitats rich in allochthonous detritus. ... Read more

Product Description
Produced by the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program, a partnership of citizens, elected officials, resource managers, and commercial and recreational resource users working to improve the water quality and ecological integrity of the Great Charlotte Harbor Watershed. A cooperative decision-making process is used within the program to address diverse resource management concerns in the 4,400 square mile study area. ... Read more

Product Description
Applicable to watershed protection and restoration efforts in both coastal and non-coastal areas, this handbook describes 28 highly successful watershed management approaches. The principles and lessons in this book, originally published by EPA in 2005, examine innovative approaches to integrating science and management, fostering collaborative decision-making, and involving the public. ... Read more