The newest site in the Land-Margin Ecosystems Research (LMER) Program is the Georgia Rivers LMER headed by Richard Wiegert at the University of Georgia. The Georgia Rivers project (GARLMER) will conduct a comparative study of the transport and transformation of inorganic and organic materials from five major coastal rivers into the sea. Other investigators on the project are Bob Hodson, Bill Wiebe, Mary Ann Moran, Alice Chalmers and Merryl Alber, Jack Blanton and Clark Alexander.
The rivers studied by the GARLMER project—the Savannah, Ogeechee, Altamaha, Satilla and St. Mary’s— differ in landscape characteristics, geological setting, flow rate, inorganic and organic loading and pH, but have similar temperature, rainfall and tidal regimes because their mouths are located within a 120-mile stretch of the Georgia coast. These five rivers offer the opportunity of comparing the impact of the land, via rivers, on the nearshore ocean and the impact of the sea, via tidal flooding, on the riparian and coastal wetlands.
Major Questions
Two major questions the project will address are:
- What terrestrial materials are transported into or through the Land-Sea Margin (or LSM, the estuarine continuum from freshwater tidal zone to nearshore marine) and to what extent are they intercepted or modified within this zone?
Some materials are kept within the LSM, but it is unknown whether terrestrially derived organic matter and both dissolved and particulate inorganic matter are sedimented out at the salinity-freshwater interface or diluted and carried to the nearshore.
- Do the intertidal vegetated zones of the LSM significantly filter and trap or modify terrestrially-driven materials? Do their characteristics and functions differ with the river?
There are presently a total of five LMER sites: the Georgia site and Chesapeake Bay in the Virginian biogeographic province, Columbia River and Tomales Bay in the Oregonian province, and Plum Island Sound in the Acadian province.