Coastal squeeze on temperate reefs: long-term shifts in salinity, water quality, and oyster-associated communities

Foundation species such as mangroves, saltmarshes, kelps, seagrasses, and oysters thrive within suitable environmental envelopes as narrow ribbons along the land-sea margin. Therefore, these habitat-forming species and resident fauna are sensitive to modified environmental gradients. For oysters, many estuaries impacted by sea-level rise, channelization, and municipal infrastructure are experiencing saltwater intrusion and water-quality degradation that may alter reef distributions, functions, and services. To explore decadal-scale oyster-reef community patterns across a temperate estuary in response to environmental change, we resampled reefs in the Newport River Estuary (NRE) during 2013-2015 that were previously studied during 1955-1956. We also coalesced historical NRE reef distribution (1880s-2015), salinity (1913-2015), and water-quality driven shellfish closure boundary (1970s-2015) data to document environmental trends that could influence reef ecology and service delivery. Over...