Macrofaunal Community Effects on Benthic Exchange Fluxes

The seafloor plays a critical role in the elemental cycling within shallow water ecosystems. Although the coastal benthos has been relatively well studied, the quantitative role of infauna in modifying critical ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling remains still poorly constrained. This stems largely from difficulties in scaling biogeochemical dynamics observed at the plot (sub-mm - m) scale to the larger framework of coastal ecosystems. In this collaborative project, we will quantify small-scale dynamics of infaunal activities and their ecological interactions under controlled conditions and incorporate these data into a novel modeling approach of sediment biogeo-chemistry. We will 1) determine to what extent spatial arrangement of burrows in a complex 3-dimensional domain alters sediment biogeochemistry, 2) measure species-interaction effects and feedbacks on sediment biogeochemistry, and 3) use our findings to provide guidance on sampling the intrinsically heterogeneous coastal seafloor.
The project is performed in collaboration with G. Waldbuesser at the Chesapeake Biological Lab, and will combine a series of sediment microcosm experiments with 3D reactive transport modeling.

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