Project Explorer

This project conducted a comprehensive review and assessment of ecosystem modeling efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

Managers need to know if the Bahia Grande ecosystem is functioning as a nursery and/or foraging grounds for fish to make informed decisions regarding whether to open Bahia Grande to public use.

This project will scope and design a plan to address the uncertainties of restoring seagrasses and associated communities along barrier islands in Louisiana, which will inform the restoration and long-term adaptive management of the Chandeleur Islands.

This project is investigating the link between nutrients, food availability, and the survival of Atlantic bluefin tuna larvae, which can be used to improve stock assessments for this commercially and recreationally important species.

The project team will identify challenges to sustaining sport fish nursery habitats, map out realistic management strategies, and plan research that informs management choices.

This project will identify uncertainties around the effects of coastal bird stewardship and habitat management actions.

This project will develop a research plan to address conservation grazing, or the use of livestock as an alternative or complementary habitat management strategy, in coastal uplands of the northern Gulf of Mexico.

This project identifies long-term trends in fish, shrimp, cephalopods, and other fauna in the deep-pelagic Gulf of Mexico (open ocean midwaters beyond the continental shelf, from just below the surface to just above the bottom) and provides this information to resource managers responsible for the numerous species that rely on deep-pelagic fauna as prey, including marine mammals.

This project is determining where the corals in different mesophotic and deepwater populations in the Gulf of Mexico originated from, which is critical information for conserving and restoring these important habitats that were damaged by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

This project is developing a new and innovative approach for attaching satellite-linked tags to small cetaceans without having to capture them.

This project created a comprehensive guide for management using indicators of five common coastal habitats: salt marsh, mangrove, seagrass, oyster beds/reefs, and coral reefs.

This project is integrating information on ecosystem stressors and predator-prey interactions into the fisheries assessment and management process in the Gulf of Mexico.

This project will result in a management and forecast system that allows resource managers to explore tradeoffs from restoration strategies as well as examine and optimize various riverine inflows.

This project will explore the feasibility of a freshwater inflow decision tool that will provide managers with a better understanding of the impact of allowing water to flow to the coast, and how to maximize environmental, social, and economic benefits while adapting to changing conditions over time.

The objective of the proposed project is to provide a transparent decision support framework to make optimal recommendations for listed species while also considering landowner objectives using a case study at the Gulf Islands National Seashore complex.

Stakeholder engagement will inform the development of a conceptual model to help environmental managers forecast how Gulf of Mexico habitats and wildlife may respond to various island and beach restoration management actions.

The project characterized the temporal and spatial variability of physical and biochemical oceanographic parameters in the Gulf of Mexico.

This project explored how changes in the flow of the Mississippi River impact natural resources and their use in the Gulf of Mexico.

This project identified, developed, and evaluated ecological health and ecosystem services indicators and an associated assessment and decision framework.

This project adapted an existing computer model for assessing the suitability of a site for construction of a living shoreline, applied the model to Perdido Bay/Wolf Bay/Ono Island complex in coastal Alabama; Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana; and Galveston Bay, Texas, and developed an interactive decision support tool that allows for a rapid assessment of a site.

This project is developing a decision support tool to aid resource managers, municipalities, and a county with decisions related to the preservation and restoration of mangrove, marsh, and beach habitats; water management; and coastal planning, zoning, and land acquisition.

This project will develop a cost-benefit framework for watershed management that will inform and reduce uncertainties during project selection of the Louisiana Watershed Initiative.

This project will prioritize efforts to restore, enhance, and create warm-water habitats in order to provide a network of thermal shelters for manatees along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

This project characterizes seasonal, annual, and decadal trends in marine mammal species in the Gulf of Mexico and assess the role of ocean conditions and human activities in driving these trends.

This project investigates how three bird species of concern (black rail, yellow rail, and mottled duck) respond to different prescribed fire management regimes within high marsh ecosystems across the Gulf of Mexico.

The project team will collaboratively scope and design research to inform decisions about the design of marsh creation projects.

This project is investigating how river diversions influence the living communities, food web structure, and function of created versus natural marshes to inform the development of marsh restoration strategies.

This project investigating migratory bird use of stopover habitats to inform bird habitat protection and restoration decisions in the Gulf of Mexico region.

This project improved and expanded an observing network and website that provides accurate real-time weather and water quality data to Alabama environmental managers and the public.

This project will establish a collaborative working group to scope and design an evaluation framework for the assessment and restoration of Gulf of Mexico marine mammals in the face of multiple stressors.

This project assessed Gulf of Mexico observation networks from an ecosystem management perspective, based on an approach that has been successfully used to assess the capacity of ocean observing networks to effectively monitor ocean circulation.

This project is testing whether trace elements associated with oil can be detected in oyster shells and serve as an indicator of oil exposure, thus providing resource managers with a way to detect past oil exposure on oyster reefs.

This project designed, tested, and applied a decision support tool to assist resource managers and oyster farmers in optimizing oyster resources in the State of Mississippi.

This project explores how oyster, blue crab, and spotted seatrout populations respond to human and environmental changes with the goal of improving the management of these economically and culturally important species.

The project team will develop a roadmap for improving fishery forecasting by accounting for future environmental and management impacts to Gulf of Mexico fisheries.

This project works with fishery managers to develop a decision-support tool to assess the effectiveness of different long-term management strategies and short-term management regulations for the red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.

The project team plans to describe the extent of depredation, or the removal of captured fish by non-target species before the fish can be retrieved by a fishing vessel, in the Gulf of Mexico to improve reef fish stock assessments.

This project combines habitat and water quality information with three integrated reef fish surveys to improve stock assessments of important fisheries by producing the most comprehensive database available for Gulf reef-fish abundance, size, and community composition.

This project is developing a comprehensive ecological understanding of Gulf of Mexico Bryde's Whales, including the physical, oceanographic, and biological features defining critical habitat and their ecological role in Gulf of Mexico marine food webs.

This project evaluates the importance of sargassum as a nursery habitat for fish in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

This project will work to reduce the uncertainties of seagrass restoration by considering the impacts of genetic variation in remaining seagrass beds.

This project will develop a research and application plan to incorporate elevation profiles into restoration projects to enhance shorebird habitat in the Salt Bayou ecosystem on the upper Texas coast.

This project will scope and design socioeconomic research to inform restoration planning decisions made for pollution incidents in the Gulf of Mexico.

This project identified fish spawning aggregation areas in the Gulf of Mexico to provide the basis for fisheries research and conservation programs.

This project will guide and inform priority management options to reduce blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate, Pyrodinium bahamense, Tampa Bay.

This project assesses the use of turtlegrass by finfish and shellfish across the northern Gulf Mexico and evaluates the specific ways seagrass supports blue crabs, a commercially important species.

Managers and scientists will collaborate on a research plan to develop a science-based tool for quantifying and reducing critical uncertainties and supporting management of the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama Coastal System, especially with regard to water quality and oyster habitat.