Title of Document: NAKED GOBIES (GOBIOSOMA BOSC) AS INDICATORS OF OYSTER REEF RESTORATION SUCCESS Terra M Lederhouse, M.S., 2009 Directed By: Dr. Kennedy T. Paynter, Director, Marine and Estuarine Environmental Sciences Naked gobies (Gobiosoma bosc) are the most abundant resident fish on oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay and serve as a critical trophic link between the benthic and pelagic comm...

Organism body size has been demonstrated to be a discriminating element in shaping the response of living beings to environmental factors, thus playing a fundamental role in community structuring. Despite the importance of studies elucidating relations among communities of different size levels in ecosystems, the attempts that have been made in this sense are still very scarce and a reliable ap...

Denitrification is commonly measured using in situ benthic chambers or laboratory incubations of sediment cores. These techniques are similar in principle but differ considerably in cost and practicality. Despite widespread use of both techniques, it is uncertain whether they give comparable results. We compared cores and chambers for measuring fluxes (dissolved oxygen [DO], N2, NH4, NO3 and NO...

Development and promulgation of sediment quality criteria represents a substantial challenge for water quality agencies. Unlike water quality programs that rely on individual chemical thresholds to assess water quality, the complex processes affecting contaminant bioavailability in sediments preclude the use of contaminant concentrations to independently assess impacts or identify cause. Variou...

We quantified the distribution, abundance and assemblage structure of macrofauna at 22 stations in Gorgan bay, seasonally in 2012-2013. Also, depth, temperature, salinity, DO, TOM and sediment particle size were measured in each station. The highest concentration of TOM was measured near the western littoral zone (10.22) while the mouth part and north-eastern area was characterized by the lowes...

An area of 0.6 km(2) in the manganese nodule field of the Central Indian Basin was physically disturbed and sediments discharged in the near bottom waters to simulate seabed mining and study its impact on benthic ecosystem. An estimated 2 to 3 tonnes of sedimentary organic carbon (C(org)) was resuspended into the water column during a 9-day experiment. The majority of the sediment cores from wi...

Patchy occurrences of benthic drift algae (i.e. loose lying macroalgal mats) may increase habitat complexity on normally bare soft bottoms, but at the same time, extensive amounts of drifting algal mats are known to stress the benthic fauna. This paper presents results of the first detailed study of the fauna associated with drift algal mats in the northern Baltic Sea. In order to assess the im...