Justin Ridge

Journal Article Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation · August 1, 2023 Physical structures generated from ecosystem engineers can have a cascade of impacts on the ecological community and the surrounding landscape. The Eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica can form extensive intertidal reefs, whose three-dimensional structures ... Full text Cite

Estimation of Intertidal Oyster Reef Density Using Spectral and Structural Characteristics Derived from Unoccupied Aircraft Systems and Structure from Motion Photogrammetry

Journal Article Remote Sensing · May 1, 2022 Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are an important component of the ecology and economy in coastal zones. Through the long-term consolidation of densely clustered shells, oyster reefs generate three-dimensional and complex structures that yield a sui ... Full text Cite

Considerations and tradeoffs of UAS-based coastal wetland monitoring in the Southeastern United States

Journal Article Frontiers in Remote Sensing · January 1, 2022 Coastal wetlands of the Southeastern United States host a high abundance and diversity of critical species and provide essential ecosystem services. A rise in threats to these vulnerable habitats has led to an increased focus on research and monitoring in ... Full text Cite

Natural Intertidal Oyster Reef Growth Across Two Landscape Settings and Tidal Ranges

Journal Article Estuaries and Coasts · December 1, 2021 Intertidal oyster reefs are typically restored to offset the loss of reef-associated ecosystem services (e.g., improved water quality, shoreline stabilization, and fish habitat), but the scale of enhanced services is predicated on the health and growth of ... Full text Cite

Temporally generalizable land cover classification: A recurrent convolutional neural network unveils major coastal change through time

Journal Article Remote Sensing · October 1, 2021 The ability to accurately classify land cover in periods before appropriate training and validation data exist is a critical step towards understanding subtle long-term impacts of climate change. These trends cannot be properly understood and distinguished ... Full text Cite

Deep learning for coastal resource conservation: automating detection of shellfish reefs

Journal Article Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation · December 1, 2020 It is increasingly important to understand the extent and health of coastal natural resources in the face of anthropogenic and climate-driven changes. Coastal ecosystems are difficult to efficiently monitor due to the inability of existing remotely sensed ... Full text Cite

Elasmobranch use of nearshore estuarine habitats responds to fine-scale, intra-seasonal environmental variation: Observing coastal shark density in a temperate estuary utilizing unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS)

Journal Article Drones · December 1, 2020 Many coastal shark species are known to use estuaries of the coastal southeastern United States for essential purposes like foraging, reproducing, and protection from predation. Temperate estuarine landscapes, such as the Rachel Carson Reserve (RCR) in Bea ... Full text Cite

Long-term washover fan accretion on a transgressive barrier island challenges the assumption that paleotempestites represent individual tropical cyclones.

Journal Article Scientific reports · November 2020 Barrier island overwash occurs when the elevation of wave runup exceeds the dune crest and induces landward transport of sediment across a barrier island and deposition of a washover deposit. Washover deposition is generally attributed to major storms, is ... Full text Cite

The role of beach state and the timing of pre-storm surveys in determining the accuracy of storm impact assessments

Journal Article Marine Geology · July 1, 2020 Dune erosion principally occurs when water level exceeds the elevation of the beach and predicting erosion is progressively becoming more important for management as coastal populations increase, sea level rises, and storms become more powerful. This study ... Full text Cite

Modeling salt marsh vegetation height using unoccupied aircraft systems and structure from motion

Journal Article Remote Sensing · July 1, 2020 Salt marshes provide important services to coastal ecosystems in the southeastern United States. In many locations, salt marsh habitats are threatened by coastal development and erosion, necessitating large-scale monitoring. Assessing vegetation height acr ... Full text Cite

Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (UAS) for Marine Ecosystem Restoration

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · June 12, 2020 Assessing, implementing and monitoring ecosystem restoration can be a labor intensive process, often short term (<3 years), and potentially destructive to the habitat. Advances in remote sensing technology are generating rapid, non-destructive methods for ... Full text Cite

Salt marsh shoreline geomorphology influences the success of restored oyster reefs and use by associated fauna

Journal Article Restoration Ecology · November 1, 2019 Restoration is increasingly implemented as a strategy to mitigate global declines in biogenic habitats, such as salt marshes and oyster reefs. Restoration efforts could be improved if we knew how site characteristics at landscape scales affect the ecologic ... Full text Cite

Rapid and accurate monitoring of intertidal Oyster Reef Habitat using unoccupied aircraft systems and structure from motion

Journal Article Remote Sensing · October 1, 2019 Oysters support an economically important fishery in many locations in the United States and provide benefits to the surrounding environment by filtering water, providing habitat for fish, and stabilizing shorelines. Changes in oyster reef health reflect v ... Full text Cite

Geomorphic response of inlet barrier islands to storms

Journal Article Geomorphology · August 15, 2019 Inlet Barrier Islands (IBIs) are infrequently studied, and are often poorly represented in coastal lidar records. The fetch limited barrier island (FLBI) model was introduced to describe geomorphic changes of IBIs over time. The FLBI model predicts that th ... Full text Cite

Integrating drone imagery into high resolution satellite remote sensing assessments of estuarine environments

Journal Article Remote Sensing · August 1, 2018 Very high-resolution satellite imagery (≤5 m resolution) has become available on a spatial and temporal scale appropriate for dynamic wetland management and conservation across large areas. Estuarine wetlands have the potential to be mapped at a detailed h ... Full text Cite

Living on the Edge: Increasing Patch Size Enhances the Resilience and Community Development of a Restored Salt Marsh

Journal Article Estuaries and Coasts · May 1, 2018 Foundation species regulate communities by reducing environmental stress and providing habitat for other species. Successful restoration of biogenic habitats often depends on restoring foundation species at appropriate spatial scales within a suitable rang ... Full text Cite

Evidence of exceptional oyster-reef resilience to fluctuations in sea level.

Journal Article Ecology and evolution · December 2017 Ecosystems at the land-sea interface are vulnerable to rising sea level. Intertidal habitats must maintain their surface elevations with respect to sea level to persist via vertical growth or landward retreat, but projected rates of sea-level rise may exce ... Full text Cite

Oyster reefs as carbon sources and sinks.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · July 2017 Carbon burial is increasingly valued as a service provided by threatened vegetated coastal habitats. Similarly, shellfish reefs contain significant pools of carbon and are globally endangered, yet considerable uncertainty remains regarding shellfish reefs' ... Full text Cite

Salt Marsh and Fringing Oyster Reef Transgression in a Shallow Temperate Estuary: Implications for Restoration, Conservation and Blue Carbon

Journal Article Estuaries and Coasts · July 1, 2017 The importance of intertidal estuarine habitats, like salt marsh and oyster reef, has been well established, as has their ubiquitous loss along our coasts with resultant forfeiture of the ecosystem services they provide. Furthering our understanding of how ... Full text Cite

Deploying Fixed Wing Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) for Coastal Morphology Assessment and Management

Journal Article Journal of Coastal Research · 2017 Cite

Carbon export from fringing saltmarsh shoreline erosion overwhelms carbon storage across a critical width threshold

Journal Article Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science · October 5, 2015 Saltmarshes are carbon storage hotspots and help to offset anthropogenic carbon emissions; however, marshes are threatened by sea-level rise, erosion, and human development. Recent efforts to constrain the saltmarsh carbon cycle have focused on the process ... Full text Cite

Maximizing oyster-reef growth supports green infrastructure with accelerating sea-level rise.

Journal Article Scientific reports · October 2015 Within intertidal communities, aerial exposure (emergence during the tidal cycle) generates strong vertical zonation patterns with distinct growth boundaries regulated by physiological and external stressors. Forecasted accelerations in sea-level rise (SLR ... Full text Cite

Classic paradigms in a novel environment: Inserting food web and productivity lessons from rocky shores and saltmarshes into biogenic reef restoration

Journal Article Journal of Applied Ecology · October 1, 2014 Gradients in competition and predation that regulate communities should guide biogenic habitat restoration, while restoration ecology provides opportunities to address fundamental questions regarding food web dynamics via large-scale field manipulations. W ... Full text Cite

Researchers bring local science into classrooms

Journal Article Eos · February 4, 2014 The need to communicate scientific research beyond academia is increasing concurrently with a growing emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in K-12 education [Breiner et al., 2012]. Connecting scientists with K-12 educators w ... Full text Cite

Oyster reefs can outpace sea-level rise

Journal Article Nature Climate Change · January 1, 2014 In the high-salinity seaward portions of estuaries, oysters seek refuge from predation, competition and disease in intertidal areas, but this sanctuary will be lost if vertical reef accretion cannot keep pace with sea-level rise (SLR). Oyster-reef abundanc ... Full text Cite

Contribution of aeolian sand to backbarrier marsh sedimentation

Journal Article Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science · January 20, 2013 The frequency of island overwash is commonly assumed to be the main factor regulating sand flux to backbarrier marshes; however, aeolian transport of sand across a barrier has received little attention in saltmarsh research. The contribution of aeolian san ... Full text Cite

A new 'pressure sensitive' method of measuring aeolian sediment transport using a Gauged Sediment Trap (GaST)

Journal Article Geomorphology · November 15, 2011 This paper describes the construction and application of a new field instrument, a Gauged Sediment Trap (GaST). Our GaST measures and captures aeolian-transported sediment, can be deployed for long periods of time (weeks), is easy to construct, and is extr ... Full text Cite