{ "culture": "en-US", "name": "Marine_Environmental_Quality", "guid": "69494E85-4781-46CE-9B45-8A6182625257", "catalogPath": "", "snippet": "Marine Environmental Quality (MEQ) Dissolved Oxygen, Eelgrass and Nutrient Monitoring in Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence \n\nSurveillance de la qualité de...", "description": "
The MEQ program is a monitoring protocol developed to assess the trophic status of estuaries in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.(sGSL) Nutrient loading from freshwater to estuaries has been collected, on Prince Edward Island (PEI) based off a validated model, for all three sGSL provinces: PEI, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. On PEI anthropogenic land-use is intensely agricultural, primarily row crops of potatoes, which leads to high nitrogen loading to estuaries. The two factors most important for impacting trophic status of estuaries are nitrogen loading and water residence time, i.e., water circulation. If water residence time is long and/or nitrogen loading is high the likelihood of seeing effects increases. <\/span><\/p> A peer-reviewed manuscript has recently demonstrated that these two factors are actually predictive of the dissolved oxygen regime in the upper estuary and that publication successfully used dissolved oxygen to ascribe trophic status to estuaries. In a companion paper it was also determined that nitrogen loading was negatively correlated with eelgrass coverage. These two papers form the basis for the MEQ program which is monitoring these two endpoints (dissolved oxygen and eelgrass coverage) to assess trophic status across estuaries within the region.<\/span><\/p>