Meeting Abstract
In 2005 Wethey and Woodin published the paper “Infaunal Hydraulics Generate Porewater Pressure Signals” in which they demonstrated that the sphere of influence of infaunal organisms may extend far beyond the immediate vicinity of individuals and their burrows through the propagation of porewater pressure waves. This phenomenon had been predicted from porous media flow theory but it was the first time that such pressure fluctuations in the porewater were actually measured in-situ. Since then porewater pressure dynamics have been measured in the presence of a range of large infaunal organisms including burrowing crustaceans, bivalves, and polychaetes. These measurements turned out to be highly useful to explore the frequencies and durations of behaviors such as burrowing or pumping and to link infaunal activities to biogeochemical and ecological processes in soft-sediment systems. In this presentation I will give a brief introduction to porewater pressure sensing in aquatic sediments and highlight some of the key findings and perspectives using this technology.
