Founded: 1982
Full Time: 23
Part Time: 10
Budget: 100,350,000.00
Director: R. Eugene Turner
Coastal Ecology Institute
Louisiana State University
South Stadium Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4110
Telephone: 225/578-6315 FAX: 225/578-6326
E-Mail: euturne@lsu.edu Website: http://www.lsu.edu/cei/
Research Areas:
Faculty and staff of the Coastal Ecology Institute (CEI) - 7 faculty and 13 research associates--seek answers to problems in coastal environments and other ecological systems. The shallow continental shelf, the coastline, inshore estuaries, and wetlands form an interface between the uplands and the open ocean. This highly active interface is neither oceanic nor upland, but a complex blend that incorporates functional aspects of both extremes and also unique properties of its own. Organic production is as high as that of our most productive farmlands, and the attraction of this zone for fish, waterfowl, and furbearing mammals makes it a major fishery and hunting resource. At the same time, the coastal zone is heavily populated and altered.
A wealth of detailed information exists about the species inhabiting this zone, about habitat requirements, and about chemical process in water and sediments. Only in recent years, has it been possible to consider this knowledge in the context of the way in which large ecological systems function. CEI emphasizes the emergent properties of large-scale ecological systems, systems that incorporate the interaction of biological, geological, hydrological, and chemical processes. This holistic view often requires the acquisition of additional data relative to individual populations or pertaining to the chemistry of a single element. This information is acquired in the context of, and in order to understand, the integrated functioning of the entire system.
Some of the major projects that CEI staff have carried out include ecological characterization studies of the major distributary basins of the Louisiana coast environmental assessments and monitoring studies, wetland loss and human impacts, use of wetlands for waste-water treatment, bottomland hardwood studies, and development of ecosystem models to predict and evaluate management and potential climate change effects on Louisiana's coast. This research has been funded by several state and federal agencies, as well as through private industries.
Many recent projects focus on specific environmental problems to provide governmental agencies and private industries with the information needed for managing coastal ecosystems. In the last few years, CEI researchers have contributed significant knowledge on the effects of flooding regimes on wetland vegetation; coastal Louisiana land loss; impacts of canals and spoil banks; subsidence, accretion, and erosion in Gulf coast wetlands; vegetation establishment in Louisiana's newest land in the Atchafalaya River delta; and the coupling between riverborne nutrients and hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Areas of Expertise:.
Special Capabilities and Facilities:
Research Equipment:
Gamma spectroscopy - for dating
Carbon analyzers (CHN)
Trace element analyzers
Autoanalyzers for nutrients
Microscopes
Variety of standard laboratory instrumentation
Keywords:
1008001 Coastal Processes
1007026 Wetlands
1008002 Estuarine Sciences
1008005 Biological Oceanography
1008175 Shelf Basin Dynamics
1008195 Surface Hydrodynamic Processes