SEA 



SCIENCE 



Worth a Thousand Words 



E r 



S e i I 



G 



reg Meyer, a doctoral student at 

 East Carolina University, no longer can count 

 the number of hours he has spent in front of a 

 computer. Sitting at his workstation once again, 

 he opens a computerized map of Whichard's 

 Beach, an area located about 20 miles southeast 

 of Greenville. 



A dark T shape represents a river, 

 and extensive foresdand shows up as a 

 dense, deep red. A smattering of bare gray 

 patches indicate fields, roads and homes. 



Meyer clicks a button and suddenly 

 the expansive red swath develops a 

 blotchy, mint-green rash. If not for the 

 identifying shape of the river, it would be 

 hard to tell the new image represents the 

 same area. 



The first map is Whichard's 

 Beach in 1990, explains Meyer. The second 

 map is the same area in 2000. The mint green 

 blotches indicate forestland that has been cut and 

 developed — just in the last decade. 



Side-by-side, the images are anchored 

 only by the Pamlico River — the dark yawning 

 "Y" — seemingly unchanged and unharmed by 

 the new development. 



But there is more beneath the surface of 

 the watery image than 

 meets the eye. 



PICTURE THIS 



Meyer is working 

 with a team of East 

 Carolina University 

 researchers to generate 

 a visual representation 

 of how land-use change 

 is affecting North 

 Carolina's estuaries and the aquatic organisms 

 that live there. 



As coastal development pushes westward 

 into North Carolina's once-rural coastal plain, 

 scientists worry about adverse impacts to primary 

 nursery areas that provide important habitat 

 for numerous commercially and recreationally 

 important species. 



Led by Joe Luczkovich, an ECU fishery 



biologist, the team also 

 includes Mark Brinson. 

 a wetland ecologist, and 

 Terry West, an invertebrate 

 zoologist. 



The researchers are 

 focusing on how land- 

 use change in places 

 like Whichard's Beach 

 — which is upstream 



from a primary nursery area — affects blue 

 crab populations, one of the most economically 

 important fisheries in the state. The project is 

 part of the N.C. Blue Crab Research Program, 

 which is funded by the North Carolina General 

 Assembly and administered by North Carolina 

 Sea Grant. 



Painting a picture of those correlations has 

 kept Meyer married to his computer for the past 

 several months. 



Meyer's colored maps did not originally 

 come in shades of red and green. They are 

 enhanced LANDSAT satellite images that he 

 color-coded by hand. 



Since 1972, NASA satellites have been 

 collecting LANDSAT images of the Earth's 

 surface. These archived images have become a 

 unique resource for global 

 change research, as they offer 

 pictorial evidence of land-use 

 changes over time. 



Meyer color-coded 

 each map to clearly identify 

 wetland, agricultural and 

 forested areas that have been 

 converted to other uses. 



Specific LANDSAT 

 images were selected to 

 correspond with spring blue crab population 

 data collected by the N.C. Division of Marine 

 Fisheries (DMF). Each May and June, DMF 

 conducts a trawl survey of juvenile species at 

 established locations in North Carolina tributaries, 

 rivers and sounds. 



"The trawls are pulled for one minute at 

 each station," explains Sean McKenna, biological 

 supervisor for the DMF central district. "The 



species are collected 

 from the net, and for blue 

 crabs, things like carapace 

 width are measured and 

 recorded," he says. 



Some of the 105 

 stations have been 

 sampled since 1978, 

 providing a wealth of 

 data on how organism 

 abundance has changed from year to year. 



Meyer added the DMF blue crab data 

 as a new layer in the computer program's 

 database. The program allows him to look at 

 10-year intervals to determine how the blue 

 crab population changes correlate to nearby 

 development activities. 



Pointing to the green-speckled images of 

 Whichard's Beach, Meyer explains that the DMF 

 data downstream from the area shows a decline 

 in blue crab stocks from 1990 to 2000 — which 

 correlates to a period of development in the area. 



This trend is not true statewide, however. 

 In some developed areas, the blue crab stock has 

 remained steady or even increased. 



"It's hard to find areas that haven't seen any 

 development," says Luczkovich of coastal North 

 Carolina. "It's a matter of degree. We're looking 

 for areas that have been intensely developed 

 versus those that have seen more scattered 

 development." 



FOCUSED ON BLUE CRABS 



So far, the land around the lower Neuse 

 River is largely undeveloped. Many sampling 

 stations in the Neuse River vicinity of Pamlico 

 Sound, for instance, have shown consistently 

 high blue crab population levels. 



That's good, "because the blue crab fishery 

 is centered in that area," says Luczkovich. 



But change is coming. 



The estuarine region, including the "Inner 

 Banks," is a hot development market one 

 expected to grow in popularity and population 

 over the next several years. 



At first, growth along the mainland side 



Continued 



Coastwatch I Early Summer 2006 I www.ncseagrant.org 25 



