Surface water quality from the Seagrass Recovery Experiment, South Bay, VA 2020-2022

To understand intra-meadow stability, the Seagrass Recovery Experiment was designed to ask 1) is recovery faster at sites with less thermal stress owing to greater exchange with cooler oceanic water at the meadow edge? 2) what is the shape of recovery? and 3) what are the recovery mechanisms? To conduct this experiment, aboveground seagrass biomass was removed from 28.3 m2 plots within the interior and along an edge of a restored seagrass meadow in South Bay, VA. Sites 1-3 correspond to the meadow interior while sites 4-6 correspond to the northern edge. Each site was comprised of a control (i.e., C) where no seagrass was disturbed and a treatment (i.e., T) where seagrass was removed (n = 12 sites total, e.g., 1C, 1T, 2C...). To further characterize differences between the meadow interior and edge, surface water quality samples were also collected and include turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS) concentration, TSS ash-free dry weight, TSS percent organic matter, pelagic chlorophyll concentration, dissolved oxygen saturation, dissolved oxygen concentration, salinity, water temperature, and specific conductivity. These discrete samples were collected monthly between June-October 2020, May-October 2021, and April-October 2022 using a 1-L Nalgene bottle and a handheld YSI Pro Plus Multiparameter meter.