2022 Symposium
On May 18, 2022, the Southeast New England Program (SNEP) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Region 1 (New England) was pleased to welcome over two-hundred attendees and twenty-seven speakers throughout the region to our first-ever virtual research symposium. During this event, participants were able to learn about the latest research on environmental issues facing the southeastern New England coastal region, hear about the success of new approaches, and broaden their understanding of regional issues and solutions.
Challenges Facing the SNEP Region
This symposium reflects SNEP’s role in convening subject-matter experts, practitioners, decision-makers, and researchers to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information on the environmental science and innovations needed to realize SNEP’s goals of ensuring safe and healthy water; thriving watersheds and natural lands; and sustainable communities throughout the SNEP region. For more information on SNEP goals, refer to the SNEP strategic plan.
Speakers:
Agenda
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Main Room – Region Administrator David W. Cash |
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Room 1 |
Room 2 |
Room 3 |
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Morning Session 1 |
Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience and Resource Protection |
Watershed Assessment Technologies |
Wastewater Technologies |
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Morning Session 2 |
Wastewater Policy and Design |
Community Capacity Building, Session 1 |
Habitat Restoration and Preservation, Session 1 |
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Keynote Speaker: Dr. James Houle, UNH Stormwater Center; Introducing the New England Stormwater Retrofit Manual |
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Afternoon Session |
Habitat Restoration and Preservation, Session 2 |
Community Capacity Building, Session 2 |
Understanding Regional Climate Change Impacts |
Slides
- Morning Session 1
- Morning Session 2
- Introducing the New England Stormwater Retrofit Manual (pdf)
- Afternoon Session
Transcripts
- Opening Speaker – Region Administrator David W. Cash Transcript (pdf)
- Keynote Speaker: Dr. James Houle, UNH Stormwater Center Transcript (pdf)
- Room 1 Transcripts (pdf)
- Room 2 Transcripts (pdf)
- Room 3 Transcripts (pdf)
Poster Presenters:
The Upper Childs River - Dennis Martin, Falmouth Rod and Gun Club
Once a vibrant cold water fishery, the Upper Childs River had become somewhat stagnant, and had been constrained by an earthen dam that was constructed for mill operations in the 1800's. In addition, cranberry bogs at the northern end of the river contained flow-control devices, and the bogs had become overgrown since the farmer's official abandonment in 2014. Being conservation minded, the Falmouth Rod and Gun Club took the opportunity to pursue (along with its many partners) restoration of the river along with creating wetlands for wildlife habitat. In a close, working relationship with state, local and federal organizations, the Club was able to acquire the bogs as well as sufficient funding to complete this ecological restoration. Without key support from the Southeast New England Program and Restore America's Estuaries, the project could not have been the success that it is.
Long-term monitoring is a valuable tool for understanding and responding to the increasing anthropogenic pressures on coastal ecosystems, and a critical action in guiding restoration efforts. Gaps in the data collected by traditional in-person or visual survey methods can be filled by acoustic monitoring, which consistently surveys wildlife activity in high temporal resolution and through low-visibility situations. These attributes could be particularly valuable in supplementing the existing monitoring and restoration efforts in the National Estuarine Research Reserve system. While awareness of the potential of acoustic monitoring is growing, it has yet to be implemented on a large scale. In order to initiate an acoustic monitoring effort in the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, we collected a set of baseline data that assesses the viability of acoustic data as a monitoring tool and the current patterns of acoustic activity within the reserve. Sound attenuation rates did not differ among locations, enabling direct comparison of recordings from different habitats. Each habitat type displayed distinct broad-scale acoustic characteristics, as measured by a suite of acoustic indices (ACI, ADI, Bio, NDSI). Degraded habitats tended to have less complexity and acoustic activity than restored areas. Acoustic characteristics also varied throughout the day, with high biological inputs in the morning and more anthropogenic and abiotic sound in the afternoon and evening. Specific soundscape components included species of ecological concern and sources of potential anthropogenic disturbance. These components reflected differences in community composition among degraded and restored ecosystems.
In many communities, regions, or landscapes, there are numerous environmental groups working across different sectors and creating stewardship networks that shape the environment and the benefits people derive from it. The make-up of these networks can vary, but generally include organizations of different sizes and capacities. As the Covid-19 pandemic (2020 to the present) shuts down businesses and nonprofits, catalyzes new initiatives, and generally alters the day-to-day professional and personal lives, it is logical to assume that these stewardship networks and their environmental work are impacted; exactly how, is unknown. In this poster, we report the results of the analysis of self-reported effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on stewardship groups working in southeast New England, USA. Stewardship organizations were surveyed from November 2020 to April 2021 and asked, among other questions, "How is Covid-19 affecting your organization?" We analyzed responses using several qualitative coding approaches. Our analysis revealed group-level impacts including changes in group capacity, challenges in managing access to public green spaces, and altered forms of volunteer engagement. These results provide insights into the varied effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and government responses such as stay-at-home orders and social distancing policies on stewardship that can inform the development of programs to reduce negative outcomes and enhance emerging capacities and innovations.
Narragansett Bay is an important resource for Rhode Island. This study is part one of a larger effort to understand circulation processes within RIS and how these processes influence the well-being of NB. We report on results using the Ocean State Ocean Model (OSOM), an application of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) on a grid that includes NB, RIS, and Buzzards Bay. Computer models like OSOM are powerful tools for understanding water movement and predicting changes under a variety of circumstances, but models must be validated against real world data. Many years of data have been gathered on circulation and hydrography in RIS using moored and underway acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCPs), Lagrangian drifters, and moored conductivity temperature depth (CTD) sensors. These data clearly show the presence of a robust, anticyclonic coastal current during summer/stratified periods, occurrences of system-altering shelf intrusions, and seasonal breakdowns in stratification. Prior studies using the ROMS model for RIS have a) revealed which wind conditions favor RIS to NB intrusions and b) suggested the coastal current is largely driven by tidal rectification. Our results represent the first detailed comparisons for OSOM versus spatially and temporally detailed current meter data along the RIS ocean boundaries and within the northern coastal water of RIS, near the NB mouth. Preliminary results for summer/stratified periods show OSOM can represent time average trends in the anticyclonic coastal current. However, analysis for the details of residual current strength versus tidal range show important differences between measured and modeled data. Ongoing efforts aim to statistically quantify coastal current strength versus tidal range, winds (magnitude, direction, duration) and density differences and to use both Lagrangian floats and dyes to better characterize patterns in long term transport within RIS and between RIS key sub-estuaries of NB and Buzzards Bay.