Eight students will be presenting the summer work at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in March 2022!
The Maryland Sea Grant bookstore is closed from December 10 to January 3.
FTWs for this experiment were constructed from a media made from synthetic fibers in which Spartina patens was established and allowed to expand. Chlorophyll content, temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen were measured within mesocosms daily, and phosphorus concentrations in water flowing into and out from mesocosms were measured weekly. We depended on a mass-balance equation to determine changes in phosphorus concentrations as water flowed throughout the mesocosms. Our data revealed an average Δ Flux Total Phosphorus of -477.95 mg/wk for FTW mesocosms during week 1, indicating the existence of a source releasing phosphorus into the mesocosms. Seedlings used to plant the mesocosms were fertilized with Osmocote at an application rate that corresponds to the magnitude of this phosphorus flux. By week 5 no Osmocote remained and the FTW mesocosms showed an average Δ Flux Total Phosphorus of 739.09 mg/wk, which implies that there is still potential for the FTWs to remove nutrients from mesohaline estuarine settings