Katie and Mike perfectly express the joys and despairs of Spartina alterniflora collection. That’s S. alterniflora and S. cynosuroides growing along the Leipsic River in the background.
If you are familiar with salt marshes, then you are familiar with Spartina alterniflora. It is the dominant grass (in fact, the dominant plant) of the low marsh, or the portion of the marsh that is regularly inundated with water at high tide. It grows 4-7 feet tall, with a slender, arching inflorescence that dries to a light tan color when its worm-like seeds are ripe. When you look out across a salt marsh, it is fields of Spartina alterniflora that you see stretching endlessly into the distance, as well as the high marsh grasses Spartina patens and Distichilis spicata. It is beautiful in the late afternoon light, and very smelly when stuffed into a garbage bag. The scent is sickly sweet.
My seed collection partner Paige and I usually spend our trips to Delaware collecting a variety of species in a variety of locations. The first couple weeks of October, however, was a marathon of Spartina alterniflora collection for a massive salt marsh restoration project at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Hurricane Joaquin and the nor’easter that preceded him did a number on the seed that was available– quite a lot of the seed heads were shattered by the time we got to them, especially at Prime Hook. Luckily, enough of the population hadn’t dropped its seed yet, and we were still able to make meaningful collections. With the help of three of our fellow MARSB interns and our mentor Clara Holmes (as well as the national Seeds of Success collection coordinator for a couple days – thank you Megan Haidet!), we managed to stuff 21 garbage bags with extremely malodorous S. alterniflora seed heads.
How many garbage bags of Spartina seed heads will fit in the trunk of a four door sedan? Apparently, not quite 14.
That may sound like a lot, but it will likely just scratch the surface of what the folks at Prime Hook are going to need for their restoration project. Even before Hurricane Sandy, more frequent storms and sea level rise caused increased flooding at Prime Hook, with multiple storms breaking through the dune line since 2006. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy widened gaps in parts of the dune system, leading to more severe flooding on the refuge and in surrounding communities. The result has been the flooding with seawater of more than 4,000 acres of freshwater marsh that was managed for waterfowl and seabirds. Prime Hook is now taking this as an opportunity to rebuild the dunes and return the managed freshwater marshes to historically occurring salt marsh, which should serve to buffer against future storms and expand critical salt marsh habitat. According to the US Fish and Wildlife profile of the project on their website, it is the largest coastal marsh restoration on the Atlantic coast. More information,as well as maps and some really cool videos showing the breaches and restoration activities, is available at http://www.fws.gov/hurricane/sandy/projects/PrimeHook.html.
Restoring 4,000 acres of salt marsh means planting an ungodly amount of Spartina alterniflora and other salt marsh species, which the restoration managers at Prime Hook would prefer, for the good of the ecosystem, to be local, ecotypically appropriate and genetically diverse. That’s why we found ourselves donning waders and saddlebags to repeatedly and very carefully trek out into the salt marshes at both Prime Hook and Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuges these last two trips. Armed with clippers and waterbottles, we fanned out across the segments of marsh that were accessible by foot, stepping from Spartina hummock to Spartina hummock. Walking through Spartina can be a strenuous, and at times treacherous, business, especially if the tide isn’t at its lowest. A misstep can lead to getting stuck up to your knee in vice-like mud, or worse, swamping your waders.
Not a great picture, but this is one of the areas where we collected on foot at Prime Hook the first week. In the foreground, the shrubby stuff is Iva frutescens, a common salt marsh shrub in the Aster family. In the background low marsh grasses Spartina patens and Distichilis spicata give way to Spartina alterniflora. There’s also a couple incongruous Phragmites (common reed) individuals in there, and some juniper trees in the background.
Thanks to the dedication and patience of refuge wildlife biologists Susan Guitieras and Dan Stotts, we also managed to get out into the marsh at Bombay Hook NWR by boat. On two separate days (Susan one day, Dan another) they took us to collect along Raymond’s Gut, which branches off the Leipsic River, and one of its associated channels. Our intrepid boat captains would pull the boat up into the Spartina, and we would furiously clip seed heads off anything within reach. We owe both Susan and Dan a huge debt of gratitude for their help and resourcefulness during this effort, not just for taking us out on the boats, but for generally making time to consult with us on our collection efforts and offering their help and advice at every juncture. Thank you so much, Dan and Susan!
Wildlife biologist and sage boat captain Dan Stotts at the helm. Behind him is a good mix of Spartina alterniflora and the taller Spartina cynosuroides (big cordgrass).
It important to note that not all of the Spartina that will be planted this spring will be from the seed we just collected – there is simply too much to plant too quickly, so they will be planting plugs of Spartina as well from another source. But hopefully what we have collected will provide a meaningful portion of the initial planting this spring, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank will continue to collect for seasons to come.
In the meantime, Paige and I return to business as usual – collecting all kinds of different species from a variety of parks in the state of Delaware. More on that in my next post!
All information on the marsh restoration at Prime Hook taken from http://www.fws.gov/hurricane/sandy/projects/PrimeHook.html