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Salt marsh ecosystems are well-known for their carbon storage capacity – they are also hotspots of respiration, which produces greenhouse gases that can counteract the long-term carbon storage. At the same time, there is a paucity of spatial and temporal measurements of greenhouse gas fluxes in salt marsh ecosystems; this lack of data impairs the ability to manage salt marsh ecosystems effectively for carbon storage. Data are limited by various factors, including logistical and financial constraints of measuring greenhouse gases.

A team from Boston University and the five New England NERRs worked together on a one-year catalyst project to test sensors that measure carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity in salt marsh environments. The team conducted five field trips throughout the year, incorporating iterative feedback on instrument design, ease of deployment, and alignment with existing monitoring efforts at the NERRs. In this webinar, the team describes the project’s approach to designing low-cost, ultra-portable instruments for measuring greenhouse gas fluxes in salt marshes, major findings that emerged from the work, as well as key applications of the technology for salt marsh restoration and research.

Speakers:

Robinson W. "Wally" Fulweiler, Boston University Wally leads the Coastal Ecology and Biogeochemistry Laboratory, which focuses on how anthropogenic activities affect the ecology and elemental cycling of ecosystems on a variety of scales, from local nutrient loading to global climate change. Recently, her group has been developing new instrumentation that will aid in constraining coastal nutrient and carbon budgets and will help increase access to low-cost technology for democratizing science. Wally is the project lead and came up with the original idea behind the new instrumentation and application to the NERR system.

Lena K. Champlin, Boston University Lena’s research in coastal ecosystems integrates spatial analysis to quantify ecosystem complexity, historical proxies to contextualize changes in nutrients over time, and collaborative research approaches. During her postdoc, Lena is conducting interdisciplinary research on salt marsh blue carbon and communicating coastal science to public audiences through creative media. Lena helped manage this collaborative project, contributing to fieldwork, integrating feedback, and presenting the results.