The plant Spartina Alterniflora, also known as , S. Alterniflora or Spartina, is the dominant marsh plant in the coastal plain of eastern North America. According to CAB International, many coastal engineers see the plant as one that could be used to create natural erosion control barriers which would help with numerous environmental problems that the world is soon to face.
The marshes support ecosystems and they support humans. The benefits that they offer prove to be a great way to recycle and shed light on a new form of restoration that could help with erosion and a number of environmental problems . Marshes can also act as a nursery to fish which are very important in the sea food industry as fish can use these marshes as their breeding grounds.
Trinity Storm, a sophomore biology major at Georgia Southern University, describes her common assumptions about aqua culture and what she knows about how it works.
“I know about aquaculture and how waste water can contain some nutrients, but they aren’t really all good nutrients,” she said. “ Fresh water waste is usually the best waste water because it has little salt and it can be used to produce and help other organisms”.
Scientist are constantly looking for solutions to protect and restore the environment. Erosion, intense flooding, hurricanes, and sea levels rising are among some of the issues that have plagued coasts . Spartina Alterniflora proves to be the plant that can offer a solution that will tackle several major environmental and economic issues and their repercussions.
Dr.Heather Joesting, a professor at Georgia Southern University Armstrong, has done research and is currently conducting a study that is experimenting with the properties of this plant and how it can be used for restoration purposes.
Her current research is directly related to coastal management because of the high importance of marshes and how they function in different environments. She described a new movement to restore living shorelines by using natural materials to help stabilize coasts.
She began her study of the Spartina Alterniflora in 2019 . Since then, she has made progress along with the help of a few undergraduate students as well as one graduate student . Germination begun in February of 2019 and it would have typically lasted 3 months ,but COVID-19 effected the progress of her research. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances ,the seeds did not see very high success rates. Dr. Joesting described another problem of seed production as low viability ,so that may have been another factor as well.
“ What we are doing together is ,we are constructing an artificial wetland ,and what we’re going to do is have a fish hatchery attached to that. And the waste water from that, which we call effluent, that will cycle through the constructed wetland and the wetland will be divided into two cells, ” said Alexander Gregory, the graduate student assisting Dr. Joesting with the study.
Some of the points her research has required her to be knowledgeable on is when the best time of year is to collect Spartina seeds, the examination of the best marshes, and the rate of germination of the seeds. They plan on sampling the water before it enters the system, sample the water in each cell, and the sample the water as it leaves the cell to test how well it cleans the waste water.
“ So, this new movement has been to restore using something called living shorelines where you use natural materials to help stabilize the coast,” she said. “A lot of those living shore line projects are accompanied by planting some of the native vegetation”.
Spartina is an important part of building and maintaining the marsh for restoration . Armoring and putting up sea walls or permanent structures are temporary fixes to coastal issues. The research by Dr. Joesting is trying to help the pressures of coastal issues but one problem with the conduction of the research is that state of Georgia has no local place to get Spartina plugs for living shorelines, so it has to buy Spartina from other states . Another interesting fact is that Georgia’s coast line is unique because it has high tides compared to rest of east coast. Dr. Joesting’s study focuses on the best way to cultivate Spartina by collecting their seeds from marshes .