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Research Projects

Active Funded Projects

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Ecological and geomorphic implications of marsh migration in Chesapeake Bay

Source: US Geological Survey cooperative agreement

Collaborator: Neil Ganju, USGS Woods Hole Science Center

Project dates: 09/2025 – 09/2030

Related Website: U.S. Coastal Wetland Synthesis Applications Geonarrative

Summary: Coastal wetlands are among the most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems on Earth. Coastal wetlands provide critical habitat, improve water quality, protect shorelines from storms and erosion, and sequester carbon (Barbier et al., 2011), but are themselves threatened by direct anthropogenic disturbance, coastal erosion, and sea level rise (Kirwan and Megonigal, 2013). Protecting adjacent uplands and facilitating marsh migration represents an important adaptation strategy for land managers, including the Department of Interior (Spidalieri, 2020). Marsh migration is particularly important in the Chesapeake Bay because traditional restoration strategies are limited by the estuary’s low tidal range and suspended sediment supply (Ganju et al., 2024). Marsh migration is expected to create 400,000 – 600,000 acres of marshland in the Chesapeake Bay by 2100, potentially compensating for losses in marsh area elsewhere (Molino et al., 2022). Nevertheless, questions remain about the viability of inland marsh migration. Newly formed marshes are prone to non-native Phragmites australis invasion (Smith, 2013), and heavily ponded soils that prevent marsh migration altogether (Taylor et al., 2020). Thus, it remains unknown whether marsh migration can preserve ecological function, and what landscape characteristics influence its success. Here we propose several research activities to better understand the ecological and geomorphic implications of marsh migration in the Chesapeake Bay. The goal of this collaborative research is to increase our understanding of ecological trajectories associated with marsh migration through a) field work quantifying ecological and geomorphic characteristics of newly developed marsh, b) remote sensing to determine how landscape characteristics influence marsh migration success, and c) numerical modeling to predict how ecosystem services will change through time. These activities strengthen USGS research on coastal vulnerability, tidal wetland evolution, and Chesapeake Bay ecosystems, and inform management of Department of Interior coastal lands.

LTER: Environmental drivers and ecosystem state change in a coastal barrier landscape.

Source: National Science Foundation, Award# 2425178

Lead PIs: Matthew A Reidenbach, Karen J McGlathery, and Max C Castorani (University of Virginia)

Project dates: 06/2025 – 05/2031

Project Website: Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research Program

Summary: This project uses long-term data to predict how coastlines will change in response to environmental change. Nearly half the world’s population lives on the coast. Even more humans depend on coastal resources. These resources are threatened by sea-level rise, warming air and water temperatures, and changes in the frequency and strength of storms and rainfall. The best way to understand how and why coasts are changing in response to these threats is to use long-term ecological data. This project will use long-term experiments and models to predict how future environments will affect coasts and their resources. The research will be done at the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research (VCR LTER) site. The results will benefit society by improving coastal management that will protect shorelines, increase biodiversity, and produce seafood.

VCR LTER research builds on prior research and addresses three themes that test fundamental theories of ecosystem state change and spatial ecology: 1) mechanisms and consequences of state change within ecosystems; 2) connectivity and coupled dynamics between ecosystems; and 3) landscape-scale dynamics of ecosystem function, synchrony, and stability. VCR LTER research will identify biophysical feedbacks that either maintain or facilitate transitions in ecosystem states--including disturbance, recovery and restoration--and threshold responses to environmental drivers. The project will develop mechanistic models, calibrated and validated with short- and long-term data, and will use these to project state change. Additionally, the consequences of state change and cross-scale interactions for ecosystems attributes will be investigated, focusing on biodiversity, organic matter, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. Collectively, this research increases the current and predictive understanding of how coastal ecosystems and their functions respond to environmental drivers. Cross-site and synthesis studies enhance the impact of the site-based research and contribute to broader knowledge on ecosystem transitions in response to long-term trends and variation in the environment.

Facilitating marsh migration to enhance carbon sequestration

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via subcontract from The Nature Conservancy

Collaborators: Kati Booth (TNC), Chris Gough (VCU)

Project dates: coming soon.

Summary: We propose to study the impact of coastal restoration on marsh migration, ecosystem health, and carbon sequestration, with a focus on how to facilitate marsh migration by breaching berms that surround uplands and newly developing marsh. Primary sites include 3-5 locations along the Virginia Atlantic Coast where existing berms will be breached as a management action, although additional measurements will be collected in reference areas without breaches, and also in locations where berms have been naturally breached by tidal channels. Responsibilities include collecting data to characterize soils, hydrology, and vegetation to evaluate the impact of berm breaches on marsh migration, ecosystem health, and carbon sequestration. Key measurements include changes in species composition, soil salinity and saturation, and sediment (deposition rates, organic content) and biological inputs (plant biomass) to carbon sequestration. These measurements will be used to evaluate restoration success, and in collaboration with flux-tower measurements from VCU scientists, will be used to better understand how saltwater intrusion influences greenhouse gas balances. Remote sensing will be used to improve a dataset of levees across the Chesapeake Bay region and scale site-specific measurements to the broader mid-Atlantic. Together, the proposed work will be used to evaluate the potential for breaching berms as a tool for enhancing marsh migration and carbon sequestration.

Long-term ecosystem response to saltwater intrusion in retreating coastal forests

Source: TBD

Collaborators: Holly Michael (U. Delaware), Keryn Gedan (George Washington University)

Saltwater intrusion is driving the transgression of ecosystems to more inland portions of the coastal landscape, creating “ghost forests” that consist of dead trees adjacent to tidal marshes and are among the most prominent visual indicators of sea level rise. The fundamental restructuring of coastal vegetation from trees to marsh has large implications for coastal sustainability, including forest resources, flood mitigation, and carbon cycling. Yet, models of coastal land conversion assume a static terrestrial landscape where conversion of forest to marsh is instantaneous whenever an inundation threshold is exceeded. We have been measuring annual changes in vegetation and soil in 98 permanent plots along the mid-Atlantic coast since 2019. Preliminary results suggest that ecosystem shifts are predominately explained by salinity gradients within and between sites, but with unexplained variance and slower than expected conversion rates that suggest interesting demographic lags, ecological feedbacks, and the importance of leading and lagging indicators. Here, we propose to use our long-term surveys along the mid-Atlantic sea level rise hotspot to determine i) the pace and extent of ecosystem change, ii) the role of drought and storms in punctuating long-term trends, and iii) how ecosystem change influences soil and biomass carbon stocks. This work will contribute to knowledge of whether ecosystem shifts can keep pace with climate, interaction of press and pulse disturbances, and the role that invasive species and transition vegetation types (i.e. shrubs) play in mediating ecosystem turnover and coastal carbon cycling.

Note: we also fund research projects through internal sources, collaboration, and fellowships to students and postdocs.

Select former projects

National Science Foundation Award # 2012670 [BROKEN LINK]. The Coastal Critical Zone: Processes that transform landscapes and fluxes between land and sea

National Science Foundation Award # 1832221. LTER: Climate drivers, dynamics, and consequences of ecosystem state change in coastal barrier systems

Department of Energy Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program via subcontracts from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Salt Marsh Accretion Response to Temperature eXperiment (SMARTX).

The Conservation Fund. Managing marsh migration at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

U.S. Geological Survey. Marsh migration into rapidly retreating coastal forests.

National Science Foundation Award # 1426981. Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: A cross-site comparison of salt marsh persistence in response to sea-level rise and feedbacks from social adaptations.

National Science Foundation Award # 1654374. CAREER: Eco-geomorphic response of coastal carbon to accelerated sea level rise