The presentation starts with a description of salt marshes, how they function, what lives there, and their importance to both their floral and faunal inhabitants and to humans - how they protect us against storm surges, absorb pollutants, etc. In the face of sea level rise, marshes, in order to persist, will have to either increase their elevation at a rate equivalent to SLR (which is accelerating) by accumulating litter and sediments, or migrate inland. Many marshes in the northeast and mid-Atlantic are not accreting fast enough and are showing signs of stress such as ponding and pannes. Regarding the ability to migrate inland, many areas have roads and development immediately inland of the marshes which prevent migration, resulting in "coastal squeeze." We will then discuss possible methods for solving these problems such as finding migration corridors, altering management of Phragmites, building living shorelines, and manipulating sediments by such techniques as thin layer deposition and the creation of runnels.
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<b>Presenter Bio:</b>
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A person standing on top of a dirt field
Description automatically generatedJudith Weis is Professor Emerita, Department of Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, Newark. Her research focuses on estuarine ecology and ecotoxicology. She has published six books (one on Salt Marshes) and about 250 refereed papers, focusing mainly on stresses in estuaries and their effects on organisms, populations and communities; behavior and ecology in contaminated estuaries; development of tolerance to contaminants; marsh plants as habitat and sink for contaminants. Much research has been in New York/New Jersey. She chaired the Biology Section of AAAS and was President of AIBS. She served on advisory committees for USEP, NOAA (Sea Grant Advisory Board). She was on the Marine Board of the National Research Council, chairs the Science Advisory Board of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, and co-chairs the Science and Technical Advisory Committee of the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary Program. She is on the Editorial Board of BioScience.