Overview
The Aoki Coastal Ecology Lab studies nearshore marine and estuarine ecology through an ecosystem lens. We study a variety of habitats, with a strong focus on seagrass meadows and salt marshes, important coastal habitats that are structured by foundation species – the dominant plants that create physical habitat for other organisms. We use a wide range of tools and approaches to integrate our research across spatial and temporal scales. Much of our work is interdisciplinary, drawing on collaborations across environmental science, ecology, geography, biogeochemistry, data science, and social science. Our research aims to advance fundamental understanding of ecosystem ecology while supporting advancements in the management, conservation, and restoration of coastal ecosystems.
Funded Projects
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- Convergence to Accelerate Research on Biological Sequestration, aka CARBS (NSF Award no. 2319597)
- Communication and Assessment of Seagrass Seed-Based Restoration Techniques (NERR Science Collaborative Science Transfer Award)
Research Themes
Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
Coastal and estuarine ecosystems are highly dynamic, with the spatial extent and condition of the habitat varying over time and space. Many coastal habitats can also exhibit alternative states – a thriving seagrass meadow or a bare mudflat can occupy the same place depending on site conditions and historic trajectories. In our work, we seek to understand the drivers of these dynamics, ranging from landscape-scale patterns in the abiotic environment to organismal physiology and the impacts of ecological interactions across trophic levels. Abundance and condition of foundation species are particularly important to the stability and vulnerability of seagrass meadows, salt marshes, and other coastal ecosystems, and in turn, the diversity and abundance of other organisms of interest rely on those foundation species. Understanding the resilience of coastal ecosystems to disturbance is a key component of studying coastal dynamics, and we investigate both the resistance and recovery of coastal ecosystems to different types of stressors, including marine heatwaves and disease outbreaks
Coastal change
Coasts are critical sites to study under global change – the umbrella of rapidly shifting processes that push ecosystems into unstable states, novel ecological interactions, and accelerating adaptation. We investigate a suite of global change drivers and the interactions between them, such as how warming temperatures facilitate disease in eelgrass meadows. An important facet of this work lies in anticipating how coastal ecosystems will respond to future changes and in identifying ways to increase coastal resilience as global change intensifies. This research intersects with other aspects of our research – how do we make coastal restoration resilient to warming temperatures? How do we manage landscapes to provide stable and robust ecological functions in a changing environment? Understanding how coasts are changing now and how those changes will propagate into the future will give us the necessary tools to steward thriving ecosystems in a changing world.
Ecological restoration
Across the globe, coastal habitats encounter a range stressors that can degrade and destroy the ecosystem. Restoration ecology as a field seeks to tackle the challenge of degraded ecosystems by removing stressors and facilitating ecosystem recovery. An overarching goal of our work is to improve ecological restoration outcomes in the coastal zone. We partner with restoration practitioners to test and optimize restoration methods, we synthesize ecological and environmental data to identify patterns and insights to support restoration success, and we build networks among researchers and practitioners to share knowledge. These efforts provide actionable results while advancing scientific understanding of ecosystem function, ecological interactions, and biophysical feedbacks in iconic coastal habitats.