Beneficial Use for Marsh Restoration

Background

Every year Mississippi (MS) loses approximately 200 acres of marsh and related habitat. The sediments that would naturally replenish the tidal marsh ecosystem are being dredged and placed in an upland site or in an offshore disposal area. The major goal of the MS Beneficial Use program is to restore or create marsh habitat using suitable sediments from dredging projects, which will help to reverse a trend that has resulted in loss of approximately 10’000 acres of coastal marsh since 1950. In order to facilitate the beneficial use of sediments, MS passed a BU law (MS Code § 49-21-61) in 2010 requiring that all sediments from dredging projects above 2,500 cubic yards be placed in a BU site. This project evaluates the current DIMR2, with DIMR1 already completed in 2013, in the Beneficial Use Program against a natural reference marsh.

The goal for created or restored marsh sites through the BU program is to restore the ecological function and ecosystem services lost because of erosion and subsidence of natural marshes, which is heavily dominated by J. roemerianus. In order to determine the trajectory of the various ongoing and planned BU sites, it is important to have both better monitoring protocols as well as a more thorough science-based understanding that will help to monitor and evaluate the ecological status of these constructed sites over time.

Read the two proposals that were funded to complete this research. The first was funded through the US Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg ERDC, and the second was a follow-on project funded through the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

A research project of the Center for Plant Restoration and Coastal Plant Research - https://sites.google.com/site/coastalplantrestoration/