Archive for the ‘salt marsh’ Tag

Combating the swamp of sadness

We know that wetlands around the world face big challenges: fragmentation, pollution, conversion, climate change, etc. But we also know that there are ways to combat these issues, and some of those options give us the chance to get directly involved in wetlands conservation. If you are looking for a way to participate, you’ve got […]

Carving out a piece of the pie

I started looking into research on wetland loss around the world and quickly discovered that a large portion of what’s been published is about the Gulf Coast, specifically Louisiana. I could write for days about the situation all around me, but I know that wetlands in many locations are in trouble, so I kept digging […]

A disappearing act

I spent the last few days at a conference in New Orleans about the changing Gulf Coast that brought together researchers, engineers, long-time residents, and a wide variety of other people. The point was to share information and viewpoints about what is happening along the coast over the short- and long-term. Sea-level rise and climate […]

Any safe haven?

Over the past month, I’ve packed up my belongings and then unpacked them again as I moved between apartments. That got me thinking about animals that travel with their ‘house’, and so my topic for this month’s posts is hermit crabs. This is a topic that is pretty well unknown to me.   During a […]

Going with the flow

As I mentioned in my last post, invasive aquatic plants are a big concern- although we are still learning about how they impact invaded ecosystems (and it’s not necessarily bad), we do know that plants such as water hyacinth, Spartina spp., and milfoil can clog waterways, change habitat, and alter faunal communities. And, as we […]

Getting your hands wet

Many of the salt marsh and barrier island restoration projects I’ve described in previous posts are pretty big scale- it would be challenging for an individual to plan and carry out offshore dredging or large-scale marsh terrace construction. But is there a way to contribute in some small fashion to these bigger projects? Given how […]

Waiting for time and tide

In my last post I described some of the techniques used in salt marsh and barrier island restoration, a pretty important topic here in Louisiana where we wait for the wave of each new storm to break, but it’s also important in many other areas around the world, especially since a large percentage of the […]

Are we sinking or is the water rising?

When I started looking into coastal marsh and barrier island restoration, I had assumed that there would be a veritable ocean of information to wade through- what I hadn’t expected was the diverse nature of coastal issues depending on where you were. A lot of the information I came across focused on coastal areas in […]

A messy topic

Where I am in Louisiana, when it rains there are standing puddles for a few days- the terrain is pretty flat and a short drive will take me to the coast. Consequently, flooding from extreme weather (such as hurricanes) is always a concern. At the same time this is a very productive environment- we’re currently […]