{"id":309,"date":"2014-02-17T04:30:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T04:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/?p=309"},"modified":"2014-02-17T16:20:20","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T16:20:20","slug":"notes-from-the-field-a-wee-taste-of-scottish-seagrass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/309","title":{"rendered":"Notes from the field: A wee taste of Scottish seagrass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often, we feature seagrass meadows from all over the world. This week, Maria Potouroglou writes about seagrass in Scotland. Maria is a PhD student at Edinburgh Napier University studying carbon sinks in seagrass. Her seagrass adventures started six years ago with projects in Greece, Spain and England.<\/p>\n

——————————————————–<\/p>\n

[Photos and text by Maria Potouroglou]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Hello Team,<\/p>\n

My name is Maria and last February I started my PhD at Edinburgh Napier University looking at the role of seagrasses as coastal carbon sinks under the supervision of Prof Huxham, Dr Diele and Prof Kennedy. Many of you will wonder what a Greek does in Scotland, when seagrasses flourish in the Mediterranean! Well, UK has always been an exotic place to me, and moreover the most abundant meadows of the most widespread seagrass genus occur here, in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Ecological fieldwork is sometimes fraught with so many obstacles that is hard to imagine why anyone would want to do it. The soft-sediment marine intertidal is one of those habitats that pose a special challenge to the species that live there and the scientists who try to study them. While the species have well adapted to the alternating physical conditions, scientists must fight the tides, which often occur too early or too late and are not sufficiently low (!!) and try to walk on the glue like sediment, which most of the times results to a cream-mud up to the knees, or fully covered waders when gravity prevails over stability.<\/p>\n

\"maria_soctland_fig1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fieldwork is carried out at Forth Estuary which is located on the east coast of Scotland and contains approximately a quarter of the population of Scotland (~1.3 million people) and a significant proportion of its industry. The Forth estuary is a macrotidal coastal plain estuary, with extensive intertidal mudflats, where Z. noltii<\/i> forms sparse beds. No dedicated Zostera<\/i> survey has ever been carried out in the Firth of Forth, while in Scotland\u2019s Marine Atlas of 2011, seagrass beds in the area were completely discarded. So, last May we established ten permanent plots, which we were monitoring biweekly by recording percentage coverage, number of shoots, length of leaves, number of flowers and any signs of disease. I am glad to say that we have a nice dataset of the growth season under our belt. Moreover, we attempted to develop an image analysis technique to actually calculate percentage coverage of the quadrats, instead of relying on our subjective visual estimations.\"maria_soctland_fig2\"<\/a>This technique was also used to map the seagrass meadows in the area. Finally, in late October we took a series of sediment cores, which are being analysed at the moment for total organic matter, organic carbon, and different sources and age of carbon.\"maria_soctland_fig3\"<\/a>Preliminary results have been already presented at a Pecha:Kucha Event (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide \u2013 and YES that is a challenge) in Edinburgh, whereas a more detailed talk about our study will be given at the final conference of the COST Action ES0906, “Seagrass productivity: from genes to ecosystem management”, which will be held on March in Portugal.<\/p>\n

Seagrass research in Scotland is up and running, so watch this space for more updates of our work.\"maria_soctland_fig4\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often, we feature seagrass meadows from all over the world. This week, Maria Potouroglou writes about seagrass in Scotland. Maria is a PhD student at Edinburgh Napier University studying carbon sinks in seagrass. Her seagrass adventures started six years ago with projects in Greece, Spain and England. ——————————————————– [Photos and text by Maria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nftf"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Cwsq-4Z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":65,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/65","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":0},"title":"World Oceans Day","author":"Giuseppe","date":"8 June, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Raising the voice for the world\u2019s seagrass on World Oceans Day Seagrass meadows around the world continue to be under threat from the activities of humans. Over fishing, climate change, coastal development, extreme weather and poor land management are all contributing to the continued global loss of these diverse and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Outreach\"","block_context":{"text":"Outreach","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/tag\/outreach"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/fish_posidonia-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":125,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/125","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":1},"title":"Notes from the Field: Tinggi Island, Peninsular Malaysia","author":"Siti","date":"18 January, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Every fortnight we feature a seagrass meadow from around the world. This week, Jillian Ooi writes about Pulau Tinggi, an island off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Jillian has just recently completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia in Perth and is now based at the University\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Notes from the field"","block_context":{"text":"Notes from the field","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/category\/nftf"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Tinggi-7.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":228,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/228","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":2},"title":"Notes from the field: Yellow River Delta, China","author":"Siti","date":"14 January, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Every so often (but only as often as we receive contributions) we feature a seagrass meadow from around the world. This week, Laura Soissons shares her observations of her field site in the Yellow River Delta in China. Laura is a PhD student with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Notes from the field"","block_context":{"text":"Notes from the field","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/category\/nftf"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Laura1-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":70,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/70","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":3},"title":"The charisma challenge","author":"Ainsley","date":"16 June, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"How can we increase the profile of seagrass ecosystems? Some practical steps for communication. submitted by Tim Carruthers As seagrass scientists we take it as a given that: seagrasses form highly valuable ecosystems, and; seagrasses are threatened by nutrient and sediment inputs, resulting in large scale losses in many locations.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":99,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/99","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":4},"title":"Notes from the field: Cyrene Reef, Singapore","author":"Siti","date":"7 October, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Every fortnight we feature a seagrass meadow from around the world. This week, Ria Tan takes us on a tour of Cyrene Reef in Singapore. Ria is an avid naturalist and runs the wildsingapore webpage. In addition to hanging out in seagrass meadows, she enjoys exploring new intertidal reefs and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Notes from the field"","block_context":{"text":"Notes from the field","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/category\/nftf"},"img":{"alt_text":"industrialtriangle.jpg","src":"https:\/\/mail.google.com\/mail\/?ui=2&ik=586174e4f0&view=att&th=132d38fa5af372eb&attid=0.0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_132d36551c6d8430&zw","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/79","url_meta":{"origin":309,"position":5},"title":"Notes from the Field: Calvi Bay, Corsica","author":"Siti","date":"23 September, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a the first of a series of fortnightly articles featuring seagrass meadows around the world. This week, Doroth\u00e9e P\u00eate of the University of Liege takes us to Calvi Bay in Corsica, which is one of her research field sites. ----------------------- By Doroth\u00e9e P\u00e9te Although it\u2019s nearest water body\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Notes from the field"","block_context":{"text":"Notes from the field","link":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/archives\/category\/nftf"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Fig3-300x191.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsa.seagrassonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}