Estuarine pelagic communities in response to resource pulses after catastrophic hurricanes

Hurricanes are climatically-induced natural disasters often affecting coastal wetland ecosystems. Recorded impacts of torrential rainfall and floodwater discharge by hurricanes, such as excessive nutrient loading and transient phytoplankton bloom often termed as resource pulses, can result in intense disturbance in estuarine ecosystems. Resource pulses provide natural experiments to observe community structure and test the stability, resilience and recovery of the community after perturbations. In September 2008 and August 2017, Hurricanes Ike and Harvey made catastrophic impacts in Galveston Bay, Texas respectively. The major impacts include storm surge of Hurricane Ike and extreme flooding by Hurricane Harvey. During 2008-2009 and 2017-2018, we sampled the bay every month including zooplankton, water temperature, salinity, Chl-a, dissolved oxygen and pH etc. In this study, we compared the responses of zooplankton communities to the two hurricanes to examine the resilience of pelagic communities to the disturbance and estimate the recovery of the ecosystem. Data analyses showed that the hydrographic conditions and zooplankton communities exhibited distinct spatial and temporal patterns after the two hurricanes. From the perspective of resource pulses, we further explored the potential processes driving estuarine pelagic communities in response to hurricanes to foster assessment and restoration of estuarine ecosystems for future natural disasters.