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Dear all,</div>
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Please join us TODAY for the inaugural graduate student EOAS Colloquium, designed to showcase the interesting and broad research being conducting by students in our department! There will be four conference style talks (12 minutes + 3 minutes for Q&A):</div>
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<b>Sierra Landreth</b>: Comparing Benthic Megafaunal Communities of the Cobalt-Rich Manganese Seamounts of the Mid-Pacific Mountains, Necker Ridge, and Hawaiian Ridge.</div>
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<b>Alexis Slentz</b>: Molecular-level composition and bioavailability of terrigenous dissolved organic matter in the Yukon River delta (Alaska, USA).</div>
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<b>Michael Core</b>: Empowering Citizen Scientists: Participatory GIS Applications for Water Quality Monitoring in the Wakulla Basin.</div>
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<b>Virginia Biede</b>: Cold water coral and sponge patch distribution and abundance hotspots on seamounts of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain</div>
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Location and Time: EOAS 1050, 3:00PM. </div>
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Abstracts Below. Please take the time to come along and support our graduate students!</div>
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Cheers, </div>
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Rhys</div>
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<u>Abstracts</u></div>
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<b>Sierra Landreth</b>: Deep-sea mining on Pacific seamounts is an imminent threat to benthic megafaunal communities. Seamounts of the central and western Pacific (CWP) are prospective targets for mining activities due to cobalt-rich manganese crusts. While
largely unexplored and undercharacterized, these seamounts are considered essential habitats to a wide diversity of deep-sea benthic megafauna. The Mid-Pacific Mountains (MPM) is an area that is poorly sampled outside the U.S. EEZ but may be targeted because
of cobalt-rich crusts. Between the MPM and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) is Necker Ridge, a feature that has been hypothesized to be a key stepping-stone in faunal dispersal between the two regions. This project aims to test this hypothesis by comparing
the species composition of CWP seamount fauna between the three regions at a consistent depth of 1,500m while also characterizing the benthic habitat and communities of potential targeted areas for deep-sea mining both inside and outside the US EEZ. The ROV
SuBastian was used to collect three replicate 500m long video transects, taken at a depth of 1,500m at each of the 7 sites. Video transects were converted to screen grabs collected every 10 seconds. Images were annotated for morphology and taxonomy of benthic
megafauna using the BioImage Indexing Graphical Labeling and Exploration (BIIGLE) website. Organisms were labeled with the Standardised Marine Taxon Reference Image Database (SMarTaR-ID) morphology and taxonomy label trees. Species composition, abundance,
and diversity of the benthic community were determined at each study site. Preliminary results indicate octocorals were the dominant taxa for a majority of MPM and NWHI sites. In contrast, sites within Necker Ridge had a higher abundance of crinoids and tunicates.
The results of this study are essential to the conservation and management of vital deep-sea habitats since a majority of sites in this project are potential targets for deep-sea mining activities.</div>
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<b>Alexis Slentz: </b>The Arctic environment is among the most vulnerable to global climate change; surface air temperatures in high-latitude regions have increased at more than double the rate of other parts of the globe since the year 2000. The rapid warming,
increased nutrient liberation, and changing precipitation patterns occurring in the Arctic have led and will continue to lead to major alterations to the landscape throughout the region, such as encroachment of trees and shrubs on the tundra, or “shrubification,”
decreased Arctic cryosphere extent (e.g., melting sea ice and glaciers, permafrost thaw), and increased frequency and severity of wildfires. Each of these disturbances may drastically impact carbon cycling within this region; principally, changes to the terrestrial
landscape will influence the quantity and quality of organic matter mobilized from the surface and into Arctic waterways, ultimately impacting carbon turnover in rivers and downstream marine environments. To investigate the influence of these threats to the
Arctic environment on the terrestrial dissolved organic matter (DOM) exported into the Yukon River (Alaska, USA), we examined the concentration, composition, and bioavailability of DOM associated with leachates of representative model source endmembers. These
soil, vegetation, and char leachates were subjected to biodegradation incubations to determine bioavailability of DOM associated with a particular landscape alteration, and ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry was used to determine compositional controls
on biolability. FT-ICR MS data revealed that bioavailability was primarily driven by lower relative abundances of condensed aromatic and phenolic compounds and higher relative abundances of aliphatic compounds. Model source endmembers exhibiting higher biolability
include permafrost, organic soil, and non-woody vegetation species, while mineral soils, woody vegetation species and char samples were less bioavailable in comparison. These results indicate that while permafrost thaw will contribute a high-energy subsidy
to the DOM pool in Arctic aquatic systems that will be rapidly utilized by riverine microbes, wildfire and shrubification may alter the quality of DOM leached from the landscape such that overall biolability of terrestrial DOM will decrease, subsequently causing
this DOM to persist into coastal and marine environments.</div>
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<b>Michael Core</b>: The Wakulla Basin, encompassing vital water bodies like Lake Munson, Munson Slough, Ames Sink, and Wakulla Springs, is facing water quality challenges due to urbanization, nutrient loading, and stormwater runoff. Its vulnerability is heightened
by a porous karst aquifer system that allows contaminants from human activities—including septic tanks and land development—to rapidly infiltrate and spread, jeopardizing ecological integrity and freshwater resources. This presentation introduces Participatory
Geographic Information System (PGIS) applications to empower citizen scientists to monitor and advocate for improved water quality within the Wakulla Basin. Utilizing platforms like ArcGIS StoryMaps and Survey123, these applications facilitate community engagement
by enabling residents to collect, analyze, and share critical environmental data, fostering stronger connections between the community, scientists, and policymakers. The methods and impacts of implementing PGIS, such as highlighting increased community awareness,
documenting local knowledge, and enhancing decision-making processes through case studies involving partnerships with organizations such as the Tallahassee Sewage and Wakulla Basin Advocacy Group and Friends of Wakulla Springs State Park, are discussed. Looking
ahead, the aim is to expand the reach of these PGIS applications to other communities and water bodies.</div>
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<b>Virginia Biede</b>: Knowledge gaps in the spatial distribution of habitat formers in the deep-sea leave communities at risk of anthropogenic disturbance such as bottom-contact fishing. Understanding how deep-sea communities are distributed on seamounts can
inform area-based management necessary to protect biodiverse communities. To gain a better understanding of patch sizes on North Pacific seamounts, an existing dataset derived from surveys with the AUV Sentry was reanalyzed. The Sentry data included annotations
from surveys of seafloor communities between 200m–800m depth on seamounts of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain annotated for the taxonomic groups of Coral, Sponge, Crinoid, and Brisingid. Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise and local
Getis-Ord were used to find patches and hotspots of abundance for individual taxonomic groups and for all fauna together. Patch sizes of Coral, Crinoid, Brisingid, and All Faunal groups varied across 100m depth bins (p<0.01) while Sponge patch size varied
both by treatment (p = 0.009) and the interaction of depth and treatment (p = 0.023). The area of Sponge hotspots varied across the interaction of depth and treatment, but not depth or treatment alone. No significant pattern was observed for Coral, Crinoid,
Brisingid, or All Fauna hotspots. Patch sizes ranged from 5m to 2000 m in length, and hotspot area from 500 m2 to over 71,000 m2. This study highlights the importance of scale as well as the usefulness of spatial analyses as a tool for area-based management.</div>
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