Collaborative research: rapid: interactions between pulse and press disturbance following a 1,000 year coastal flood in hawaii

Active Project Grant Awarded Last action

Award ID
2629483
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$37,816

Award facts

Assistance listing
47.074 Biological Sciences
Completion date 26% complete
Place of performance
Charleston, SC 29424, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

As the agency reported it.

Abstract
O?AHU, hawai?I experienced a 1,000-YEAR storm event in march 2026 that inundated the island with more than two trillion gallons of water, resulting in severe coastal flooding and persistent brown-water alerts. This unprecedented input of freshwater, sediments, and nutrients has the potential to drastically alter the composition and abundance of the shallow-water organisms surrounding the island. Hawaiian rocky intertidal communities are susceptible to such disturbances yet valued for sustaining local food security and providing crucial refuge for native species. A long-term (20-YEAR) continuous survey along the south shore of O?AHU shows these shoreline communities are lush, with a high abundance of seaweed and herbivores (urchins, limpets). This dataset also captured the initial invasion and spread of the seaweed avrainvillea lacerata (MUDWEED). MUDWEED dramatically changes rocky reefs to sediment-rich habitats, thereby altering the organisms that thrive there. This project leverages the extreme flooding event and two-decade long dataset with a before-and-after natural experiment to test how a habitat-forming, invasive species interacts with coastal flooding to affect intertidal communities. The results of this study will help resource managers determine whether MUDWEED increases the resistance of communities to flooding or instead prevents them from returning to their pre-disturbance state. Furthermore, this project will be integrated with existing secondary and university-level educational programs to support the training of students for the biological sciences workforce. This study aims to test whether the invasive, habitat-forming seaweed avrainvillea lacerata alters the resistance and recovery of hawaiian rocky intertidal communities following the march 2026 flooding event. In the pulse-press framework for resilience, IT is predicted that communities with greater chronic disturbance (more MUDWEED) will be more resistant to pulse disturbances but be less likely to recover native species, leaving the community in an altered stable state. To measure community resistance and recovery post-flooding, six sites will be surveyed along the south shore of O?AHU four times over the next 12 months. Documented variation in MUDWEED coverage among sites provides for an examination of how communities respond to flooding under varying levels of press disturbance. Surveys done during negative low tides will quantify the percent cover of seaweed species, and the density (M2) of sea urchins and sea cucumbers stratified across the intertidal zone. Environmental measurements (temperature, salinity, and nitrogen content) will distinguish flooding effects from background conditions. Species coverage and densities pre- and post-flooding will be compared with historical data to determine community resistance and recovery, with chronic invasion as a potential mechanism. Research outcomes will improve the ability to predict community change in response to invasive ecosystem engineers in understudied tropical systems and thereby inform conservation biology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.

Quick answers

Who received award 2629483?

2629483 was awarded to College Of Charleston by Division of Environmental Biology (National Science Foundation) on August 1, 2026.

How much is award 2629483 worth?

$37,816 has been obligated on 2629483.

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