Response of Benthic Infauna to Marsh Restoration in Jamaica Bay

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This is not a request for application - this is just an anouncement that The Research Foundation of CUNY on behalf of Brooklyn College has received an award for their work in response of Benthic Infauna to Marsh Restoration in Jamaica Bay. Specificaly, The Cooperator will: 1. Address research questions using existing data collected during the National Park Service's marsh monitoring program from 2005 to 2012 and new data collected during the National Park Service’s ongoing marsh monitoring program in 2013 and 2014. 2. Adopt existing NPS protocols for data collection whenever possible to facilitate comparisons. 3. Collect information on sediment grain size, determined as percentage of sand, silt and clay using either the pipette or hydrometer method (Pansu 2006); marsh surface elevation at the sampling locations using a Trimble RTK; percent organic matter determined by loss on ignition at 500°C; and, above and below ground biomass using NPS protocols. 4. Collect the benthic core samples and the other field parameters using the above NPS protocols and methods. Species richness, total abundance and composition of the benthic infauna communities will be calculated from all core samples (the archieved 2005-2012 cores and 2013-2014 cores). 5. Compare post-restoration infauna communities at two restored marshes (Elders East, Elders West), with an unrestored healthy reference marsh (JoCo), and a degraded marsh (Big Egg). 6. Compare pre- and post-restoration communinties at Elders East and Elders West. Cooperator will also use univariate and multivariate statistical methods (Moseman et al. 2004) to test for temporal and spatial differences in infaunal communities as a function of time since restoration and the abiotic parameters previously listed.

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