Monitoring Programs

Research Programs | Monitoring Programs

Monitoring is an essential part of ecosystem science and management. It provides baseline data to help track natural changes, identify new threats, and assess the effectiveness of management programs. The Great Bay NERR supports and manages programs to monitor water quality as well as key habitats and species in the Great Bay Estuary. Many of our monitoring efforts are conducted as part of the System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP), through which all National Estuarine Research Reserves implement consistent protocols to track weather, water quality, and certain habitat conditions. The use of standardized approaches to the collection, analysis, and management of data through the SWMP enables the data to be used for a variety of local purposes as well as for regional and national comparisons of estuarine conditions.

Water Quality and Weather

Circles are water quality monitoring stations
The triangle is Great Bay NERR's
weather station
Courtesy of GBNERR's Stewardship Program

The Great Bay NERR's water quality monitoring program was initiated

in 1995 as part of the NERRS' System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) and operates through a cooperative agreement with the UNH's Jackson Estuarine Laboratory. The first monitoring station was established in the middle of Great Bay, and subsequent stations have been added in the Squamscott, Lamprey, and Oyster rivers. At each station, a multi-parameter datasonde records temperature, depth, salinity, turbidity, pH, and dissolved oxygen every 15 minutes.

Dissolved inorganic nutrients, suspended solids, particulate organic matter, and chlorophyll-a are also measured monthly at each of the four locations. In addition, the same parameters are tracked at frequent intervals over a full lunar cycle at the Lamprey River location.

Further, a weather station provides contextual information to aid the interpretation of the water quality data. The weather station, located in Greenland, NH, collects data on temperature, precipitation, barometric pressure, relative humidity, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and wind speed and direction.

Water quality and weather data are telemetered in near real-time so that users of the data can track changes in the environmental conditions in Great Bay. Real-time data for all stations can be viewed at www.greatbaydata.org. All historical and recent data are available from the NERRS Centralized Data Management Office.

For additional water quality data on the Estuary, go to the Great Bay Coastal Buoy website.

Courtesy of GBNERR's Stewardshp Program

Habitat Monitoring

The Great Bay NERR supports and conducts monitoring programs to establish baseline conditions and track changes in vegetated subtidal (seagrass) and intertidal (salt marsh) habitats in the Great Bay Estuary.

Seagrass beds provide important spawning, nursery, and feeding habitats for a variety of fish, shellfish, waterfowl, and wading birds. For this reason, recent declines in the spatial extent and biomass of seagrass in the Great Bay Estuary are particularly concerning. In 2007, the Reserve worked with Dr. Fred Short at the UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab to assess in situ conditions within a large eelgrass bed in Great Bay. This effort compared monitoring protocols developed by the NERRS with those used worldwide by SeagrassNet. Since establishing this monitoring site, Dr. Short has continued implementing the SeagrassNet protocols to track changes in eelgrass cover and biomass.

Salt marshes represent a key intertidal habitat for many species. They also may provide early signals of ecological responses to climate change as plant species may shift due to changing precipitation regimes and water levels. In 2010, the Great Bay NERR began collaborating with Dr. David Burdick at the UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab to begin monitoring vegetation communities and physical conditions in three marshes. This monitoring program will enable us to understand how the spatial and temporal dynamics of emergent vegetation is related to physical factors, such as elevation and salinity. These data will also prove valuable for assessing how climate change may affect the physical and biological structure of marshes in the estuary.