Miller Lab

Research

Using novel coastal armoring methods to support greater intertidal community productivity and resilience against climate warming impacts

USC Sea Grant – NA24OARX417C0030-T1-01 SCON-00006825

The Port of San Diego began a pilot project in 2021 to replace sections of aging rock riprap shoreline on Harbor Island in San Diego Bay with cast concrete blocks that are intended to provide more favorable habitat for intertidal algae and animals, while still armoring the shoreline against wave action. The goal of our project is to help monitor the development of those intertidal communities on the new concrete blocks in comparison to the original quarried rock riprap and to natural rock habitats nearby on Pt. Loma.

In addition to community diversity surveys, we are monitoring community respiration and evaluating how temperature stress might differ in the habitats created by the concrete blocks versus the quarried rock. This work will continue through 2026.

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Habitat heartbeats: Incorporating bivalve biosensors into estuary monitoring infrastructure to inform water quality monitoring and management

National Estuarine Research Reserve Science Collaborative # NA19NOS4190058 SUBK00016699

With Kristen Goodrich and Jeff Crooks (Tijuana River NERR and Southwestern Wetlands Interpretive Association) & Sarah Giddings (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

This work is sponsored by the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative, which supports collaborative research that addresses coastal management problems important to the reserves. The Science Collaborative is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and managed by the University of Michigan Water Center (NA19NOS4190058)

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Collaborative Research: Cost-effective metrics for monitoring living shorelines

CSU COAST #COAST-SSINP-2021-003

With Danielle Zacherl (CSU Fullerton), Joseph Carlin (CSU Fullerton), & Christine Whitcraft (CSU Long Beach)

Scientists in Newport Bay, California restored the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida) and Eelgrass (Zostera marina) together, as both species could prevent coastal erosion and create valuable habitat in a highly trafficked estuary. This paired restoration not only aimed to restore both historically abundant species to functional population sizes, but also intended to return valuable ecosystem services to Newport Bay. Five years later, we were interested in studying the physiological performance of the restored oysters through measuring their heart rates and valve gaping with custom made sensors. These sensors take real time measurements of oyster performance that correlate with energy used for growth and reproduction, allowing us to understand the direct response oysters have to various abiotic conditions and inform future restoration efforts. This work was funded by CSU COAST State Science Information Needs Program grant #COAST-SSINP-2021-003.

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Collaborative Research: Effects of multiple aspects of climate change on marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

NSF BIO-OCE #1904185

With Cascade Sorte (UC Irvine), Matt Bracken (UC Irvine), & Kristy Kroeker (UC Santa Cruz)

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Collaborative Research: Context-dependency of top-down vs. bottom-up effects of herbivores on marine primary producers

NSF BIO-OCE #1904184

With Matt Bracken and Adam Martiny (UC Irvine)

Humans are impacting natural coastal communities at a variety of levels, such as increasing nutrient loads in coastal waters, or removing important consumers such as herbivorous snails and limpets from the community. This project is designed to help test the relative importance of bottom-up subsidies such as increasing nutrient delivery from nearshore waters versus top-down impacts of grazing pressure by consumers. There is the added wrinkle that those grazing herbivores also return some of the nutrients back into their local habitat via their waste products, and so these experiments are designed to tease apart the contributions of consumer-derived nutrient cycling from external nutrient sources such as upwelling coastal waters. This project involves a series of experimental tide pool manipulations carried out at southern, central, and northern California sites to measure the impacts of nutrient supplementation, grazer abundance, and tide pool warming on grazing rates, microalgal productivity, nutrient supply, and community respiration. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation, award #1904184.

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Mussel gaping behavior and physiology

With W. Wes Dowd (Washington State University)

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Black Oystercatcher predation on rocky shore communities

With Wes Dowd (Washington State University), Jennifer Burnaford (CSU Fullerton)

We have been exploring the methods by which black oystercatchers on the California coast attack and consume their prey, including mussels and limpets. This work includes making measurements of the magnitude of forces oystercatchers impart on their prey using novel force transducers and accelerometers, and making observations of wild birds feeding in the field.

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The Open Wave Height Logger

For the past several years Dr. Miller has been designing, building, and refining a low-cost (<$200), long-duration (>1 year) pressure sensor data logger called the Open Wave Height Logger (OWHL, “oh well” or ‘owl’ depending on your preference) to allow recording of wave conditions in nearshore environments. Having a robust, cheap device that can give researchers wave data directly from their sites, rather than from more distance offshore wave buoys, is a prime motivation of this project. The low cost of the design potentially allows a researcher to deploy the OWHL in areas where the danger of losing more expensive commercial sensors would preclude their use. If an OWHL disappears, just throw up your hands and say “oh well”, at least it’s cheap to replace. The design is based off of the Arduino open-source hardware and software system, so that users can download, build, program, and modify their own OWHL without being tied to a manufacturer’s proprietary hardware and software.