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Salt Marsh Restoration

In the face of climate change, tidal marshes play an important role through carbon sequestration and increasing coastal resiliency by their mitigating effect on sea level rise to bordering inland areas. These ecosystems are among the most productive ecosystems in the world and provide significant habitat for aquatic and terrestrial organisms and provide a wealth of ecosystem services including climate change mitigation like the sequestration of carbon. However, throughout the Eastern Seaboard, salt marshes have a long history of anthropogenic alteration due to land use and management practices. Impoundment and ditching, i.e., salt hay farming and mosquito control have altered the hydrological systems that would otherwise allow a tidal marsh to serve its natural ecological functions leaving some of the bay’s marshes 2-3ft lower in elevation than that of a natural undamaged marsh.

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Salt hay farming in Delaware Bay prevented the natural process of marsh accretion, leading impounded marshes to become lower in elevation under time. These impounded marshes are vulnerable to flooding and inundation from sea level rise.

To restore these marshes properly, raising the elevation 2-3ft, new containment restoration techniques needed to be developed. Our team developed this method successfully restoring salt marsh in the bay with the use of coir logs to create containments around the perimeter of the project site achieving our target elevations and 80% vegetation coverage within 2 growing seasons.

More importantly, it has been found that found that carbon sequestration in restored marshes is higher than in unmanaged damaged marshes and similar to levels of a natural marsh. Our restoration methods open new doors for salt marsh restoration and restoring the natural function of the marsh. The sequestration of carbon will soon be one of the most important benefits of natural ecosystems and the restoration of damaged habitats and a powerful tool in the global effort to reduce the impact of climate change.

Series of drone images showing the successful restoration of a degraded area of marsh at Thompsons Beach.
Series of drone images showing the successful restoration of a degraded area of marsh at Thompsons Beach.
Team laying down coir logs at Thompsons Beach
Team laying down coir logs at Thompsons Beach

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