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Plum Island Estuary: Studying how marshes respond to sea-level rise

 Science Nation

At the Plum Island Sound estuary in northeastern Massachusetts, the marsh floods like clockwork. At high tide, you can pass over the mudflats into the grass in a boat. At low tide, the ocean waters recede, leaving behind fresh deposits of nutrient-rich food for the birds and other wildlife, including juvenile game fish such as striped bass. It's an ecosystem that is at once both hardy and fragile. The estuary is part of the Plum Island Ecosystems LTER. LTER stands for "Long Term Ecological Research." The LTER Network was created by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1980 to conduct research on ecological issues that can last decades and span huge geographical areas. The Plum Island Ecosystems LTER was established in 1998 and, like other LTER sites, this one is focused on the long view. The research is expected to continue for a generation or more. Biogeochemist Anne Giblin of the Marine Biological Laboratory is leading a team of researchers who are studying the Plum Island salt marshes to determine how this 2,000-year-old ecosystem is holding up under climate change, land use changes and sea-level rise.

Credit: National Science Foundation