NOAA Open Data Dissemination: Petabyte-scale Earth system data in the cloud.

NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) makes NOAA environmental data publicly and freely available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These data can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection and span key datasets across the Earth system including satellite imagery, radar, weather models and observations, ocean databases, and climate data records. Since its inception, NODD has grown to provide public access to more than 24 PB of NOAA data and can support billions of requests and petabytes of access daily. Stakeholders routinely access more than 5 PB of NODD data every month. NODD continues to grow to support open petabyte-scale Earth system data science in the cloud by onboarding additional NOAA data and exploring performant data formats. Here, we document how this program works with a focus on provenance, key datasets, and use. We also highlight how to access these data with the goal of accelerating use of NOAA resources in the cloud.

Top-down and bottom-up controls on southern New England salt marsh crab populations.

Southern New England salt marsh vegetation and habitats are changing rapidly in response to sea-level rise. At the same time, fiddler crab (Uca spp.) distributions have expanded and purple marsh crab (Sesarma reticulatum) grazing on creekbank vegetation has increased. Sea-level rise and reduced predation pressure drive these changing crab populations but most studies focus on one species; there is a need for community-level assessments of impacts from multiple crab species. There is also a need to identify additional factors that can affect crab populations. We sampled crabs and environmental parameters in four Rhode Island salt marshes in 2014 and compiled existing data to quantify trends in crab abundance and multiple factors that potentially affect crabs. Crab communities were dominated by fiddler and green crabs (Carcinus maenas); S. reticulatum was much less abundant. Burrow sizes suggest that Uca is responsible for most burrows. On the marsh platform, burrows and Carcinus abundance were negatively correlated with elevation, soil moisture, and soil percent organic matter and positively correlated with soil bulk density. Uca abundance was negatively correlated with Spartina patens cover and height and positively correlated with Spartina alterniflora cover and soil shear strength. Creekbank burrow density increased dramatically between 1998 and 2016. During the same time, fishing effort and the abundance of birds that prey on crabs decreased, and water levels increased. Unlike in other southern New England marshes where recreational overfishing is hypothesized to drive increasing marsh crab abundance, we propose that changes in crab abundance were likely unrelated to recreational finfish over-harvest; instead, they better track sea-level rise and changing abundances of alternate predators, such as birds. We predict that marsh crab abundance will continue to expand with ongoing sea-level rise, at least until inundation thresholds for crab survival are exceeded.

Cultural Eutrophication Is Reflected in the Stable Isotopic Composition of the Eastern Mudsnail, Nassarius obsoletus.

In aquatic ecosystems, biological indicators are used in concert with nutrient concentration data to identify habitat impairments related to cultural eutrophication. This approach has been less commonly implemented in coastal areas due to the dominance of physical conditions in structuring biological assemblage data. Here, we describe the use of the stable isotopic composition of (Say), the eastern mudsnail, as an indicator of cultural eutrophication for 40 locations in coastal estuaries in New York. We found N enrichment in mudsnail tissue where watersheds had high population densities, land use patterns were more urbanized, and when sampling sites were adjacent to wastewater treatment plant discharges. Stable carbon isotopes were responsive to salinity and watershed forest cover, with more saline sites reflecting a predominantly C or algal carbon isotopic signature and more forested sites a lighter isotopic signature reflecting greater inputs of C terrestrial detrital carbon. Mudsnail nitrogen isotopic composition had a high level of separation between more affected and pristine watersheds (from 6.6 to 14.1‰), highlighting its utility as an indicator. We thus propose that stable isotope values of estuarine biota, such as the eastern mudsnail, can be used in concert with water quality data to identify areas where improvements in water quality are needed and can also be used to identify sources of detrital carbon to estuarine environments.

Indicators of nutrient pollution in Long Island, New York, estuarine environments.

Roughly eight million people live on Long Island, including Brooklyn and Queens, and despite improvements in wastewater treatment, nearly all its coastal waterbodies are impaired by excessive nitrogen. We used nutrient stoichiometry and stable isotope ratios in estuarine biota and soils to identify water pollution hot spots and compare among potential indicators. We found strong gradients in δ15N values, which were correlated with watershed land cover, population density, and wastewater discharges. Weaker correlations were found for δ13C values and nutrient stoichiometric ratios. Structural equation modeling identified contrasts between western Long Island, where δ15N values depended on watershed population density, and eastern Long Island where δ15N values reflected agriculture and sewage discharges. These results illustrate the use of stable isotopes as water quality indicators, and establish a baseline against which the efficacy of strategies to reduce nutrients can be measured.

Burrowing and foraging activity of marsh crabs under different inundation regimes.

New England salt marshes are susceptible to degradation and habitat loss as a result of increased periods of inundation as sea levels rise. Increased inundation may exacerbate marsh degradation that can result from crab burrowing and foraging. Most studies to date have focused on how crab burrowing and foraging can impact the dominant low marsh plant species, Spartina alterniflora. Here we used a mesocosm experiment to examine the relationship of foraging and burrowing activity in two dominant New England crab species, Sesarma reticulatum and Uca pugilator, and the combined effect of inundation, on the dominant high marsh plant species Spartina patens using a 3 × 2 factorial design with three crab treatments (Sesarma, Uca, control) at two levels of inundation (low, high). Plants were labeled with a nitrogen (N) stable isotope tracer to estimate plant consumption by the two crab species. At both levels of inundation, we found that S. reticulatum had a significant negative impact on both above- and below-ground biomass by physically clipping and uprooting the plants, whereas U. pugilator had no significant impact. Low inundation treatments for both crab species had significantly greater aboveground biomass than high inundation. Stable N isotope tracer levels were roughly the same for both S. reticulatum and U. pugilator tissue, suggesting that the impact of S. reticulatum on S. patens was not through consumption of the plants. Overall, our results suggest the potential for S. reticulatum to negatively impact marsh stability, and that effects of crab foraging behavior may be heightened by increased inundation.