Sentinel Sites

Sentinel sites are research and monitoring sites created to increase the capacity for early detection of environmental change in response to natural or anthropogenic stressors to enable timely management responses.

Sites have been established across the NERRs that seek to answer questions including

  • What are the current distributions of vegetation communities with respect to elevation and tidal range?
  • How sensitive are spatial distributions and community composition to year to year changes and episodic events, such as hurricanes?
  • What is the response of vegetation, in terms of spatial distribution and community composition, to long-term changes in local water levels and inundation patterns?
  • What is the response of sediment elevation to discrete episodic inundation events, as well as long-term changes in local water levels and inundation patterns?

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