Project Director: Jeremy (Jerry) Wiggert, Greg Easson, Kamal Ali, Adam Skarke

Funding Organization: Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence (MBRACE)

Funding Cycles: MBRACE 2

Description: The MBRACE Core Research program for 2020 – 2022 will continue to model and assess seasonal trends in Mississippi Sound water quality, the dynamics of freshwater inflow into the Sound, and the suitability of Sound waters for sustainable oyster production. During the initial round of Core Research Program funding (2018-2020), the MBRACE partners, at USM, MSU, JSU and UM, collected essential base-line data that supported assessments of western Mississippi Sound water quality, stressors impacting water quality, oyster biology and ecology, and oyster reef health and sustainability. This new project extends the original Core Research Program’s research activity through continuing to model and assess water quality in the western Mississippi Sound while expanding our research activities into bays and other coastal waters, assessing locations with the potential for sustainable estuarine ecosystem development, and synthesizing all data from the first phase of research for distribution and use by competitively funded projects. Due to record flooding in much of the Mississippi River valley, the Bonnet Carré spillway was opened in 2018 and twice in 2019 to relieve flooding pressure on levees in New Orleans. This unprecedented event resulted in a large influx of freshwater into the Mississippi Sound through Lake Pontchartrain. This project gathers the data needed to model and assess: (1) the return of water quality conditions in the western Mississippi Sound that can support and sustain existing oyster reefs; (2) oyster spat movement and successful recruitment onto reefs; (3) the reestablishment of oyster reefs growing toward harvestable size; and (4) the overall ecosystem services of the Sound. This provides the MBRACE team with a unique opportunity to study the recovery of an estuarine ecosystem from a major event. The effort to assess the Sound’s recovery and identify potential locations for establishing new oyster reefs consist of a comprehensive, interleaved observational and modeling approach that provides a holistic view of the Mississippi Sound marine ecosystem. The research integrates water quality and ecological data with a coordinated suite of numerical models. Data are obtained by ship-based sampling, in situ sensor platforms, and spat settlement experiments. The models provide insight on water quality conditions throughout the Sound, advective pathways suitable for oyster spat transport, settlement and successful recruitment, and near real-time projection of the impact of spillway openings, flooding events, and storms. The use of high spatial and temporal resolution remotely sensed imagery provides all researchers with a synoptic view of conditions of the Mississippi Sound and the contributing land surface areas. Project results will provide a more thorough understanding of the recovery of the western Mississippi Sound and its oyster reefs, a science-based approach to selecting new areas for oyster and ecosystem restoration, and the initialization of a long-term set of data describing conditions in the Mississippi Sound.