Research Questions                                    

Broad-scale human adaptation to climate change will become increasingly necessary in the coming decades, thus, it is critical that during this period of historically unprecedented ecological change, meaningful linkages across scientific and decision making arenas are developed to anticipate climate-related ecosystem changes and invest strategically to increase socio-ecological resilience.

I’m interested on marsh/wetland interactions with climate and with humans. In essence, 3 questions drive my research. Where’s the challenge on watching plants grow? What’s so special about coastal wetlands? And how the future of our coasts going to look like and why do we care? Before answering these questions, I’ll add that any of them can be focused using different lenses (where “lens” is scale: temporal, spatial and complexity). So I guess the answer depends on the glasses we look through.

 Research Program                                    

Where’s the challenge on watching grass grow? The large majority of marshes are monocotyledons, where the most common genus for salt marsh is Spartina sp. a “true” grass (Family: Poaceae). Plant biomass and productivity result from photosynthesis and its interaction of environmental drivers (light, nutrients, water availability). Our world is presenting rapid changes on these and other environmental drivers and we don’t know if and how plants will cope. The challenge: to understand and then predict how plants will respond to these changes. For answers to this question, we use a combination of field experiments using nutrient manipulations, lab work to measure carbon content and computational analyzes to examine grow trends and potential declines.

What’s so special about coastal wetlands? Two things make these communities/habitats special: a) they are very productive and support lots of species that we like to eat; b) We like to use this areas for agriculture, landfills and places to put “marinas”. This conflict between wetlands doing good things for us versus doing things to wetlands that are good for us makes it evident on how special these areas are. Research questions on how coastal areas respond to diverse impacts, natural and man-made are addressed using simulation modeling. Our research of integrating landscape ecology to assess different approaches to coastal resource management has been based on leading and participating with several multidisciplinary teams for the development of these ecosystem models. Previous modeling efforts span from plant productivity, fish migration, medium-sized experiments, to landscape simulation focused on understanding processes in wetlands and tropical watersheds.

What’s the future of coastal wetlands is going to look like and why do we care? Changing climate will affect coastal communities in their growth, resislience and potential survival. These highly regarded natural areas are also at risk due to human population growth. We have several research projects to understand and predict how coastal wetlands will look like on time spans of 50 to 100 years into the future. We use regional landscape models to predict the distribution and adaptation of coastal habitats on different watersheds. Our results have the potential to be used for policy and planning development. I’m very interested on building groundwork for the development of integrated socio-ecological models focused on opportunities that meet coastal needs for climate-related decision, and support communication with coastal managers and policy makers for more extensive incorporation of human dimensions.

Where are our projects? Research projects have included coastal North Carolina, estuaries and bays of Louisiana, models for the Virginia Coastal Reserve estuarine complex (an LTER site), the Everglades in Florida, Padilla Bay in Washington, Liberty Island on the San Jacinto Delta, California, and several coastal lagoons in the Mexican Caribbean.

Courses Taught

BIOL4320 Ecological Responses to Global Climate Change

BIOL 6128 Systems Ecology.

BIOL7300 Landscape Ecology.

BIOL7310 Ecological Simulation and Modeling

BIOL7320 Ecosystems of Coastal Cities.

BIOL7330 Ecological Dimensions of Coastal Zone Management.

International Certificate Courses in:

Ecología de Sistemas. Institut de Recerce I Tecnologia Agroalimentaries, Ecosistemes Aquàtics. Spain.

Ecology of Estuarine and Coastal Tropical Ecosystems. Inst. de Ecología, Mexico.

Manejo Integrado de la Zona Costera. Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico.

Recent Publications

Reyes, E., K.A. Rose, D. Justic. 2012. Estuarine Ecological Modeling. In: Estuarine Ecology (2^nd Edition). Day, J.W., W.M. Kemp, A. Yanez-Arancibia, B.C. Crump. (eds). John Willey, New York. 723 pages. ISBN: 978-0-471-75567-8.

Fagherazzi, S., S. Temmerman, J. van de Koppel, A. D’Alpaos, E. Reyes, C. Craft, J. Cluogh, J. Rybczyk, S. Mudd. 2012. Numerical models of salt marsh evolution: ecological and climatic factors. Submitted to: Reviews of Geophysics. 50, RG10002, doi:10.1029/2011RG000359.

Mcleod, E., B. Poulter, J. Hinkel, E. Reyes, R. Salm. 2010. Sea level rise impact models and environmental conservation: A review of models and their applications. Ocean and Coastal Management. 53: 507-517.

Cahoon, D.R., D.J. Reed, A.S. Kolker, M.M. Brinson, J.C. Stevenson, S. Riggs, R. Christian, E. Reyes, C. Voss, and D. Kunz, 2009: Coastal wetland sustainability. In: Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region. A report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. [J.G. Titus (coordinating lead author), K.E. Anderson, D.R. Cahoon, D.B. Gesch, S.K. Gill, B.T. Gutierrez, E.R. Thieler, and S.J. Williams (lead authors)]. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington DC, pp. 57-72.

Reyes E., 2009. Wetland Landscape Spatial Models. In: G.M.E. Perillo, E. Wolanski, D.R. Cahoon, M.M. Brinson, (eds.), Coastal Wetlands: An Integrated Ecosystem Approach. Elsevier, p. 885. ISBN: 978-0-444-53103-2.

Poulter, B., R.L. Feldman, M. Brinson, B. Horton, M. Orbach, S. Pearsall, E. Reyes, S. Riggs, J. Whitehead. 2009. Managing coastal systems for sea level rise: Coastal policy and research progress in North Carolina, USA. Ocean and Coastal Management. 52: 147-153

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