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+--- Thread: Salt Marshes under attack.Story out of the Hartford Courant. (/showthread.php?tid=269489)
Salt Marshes under attack.Story out of the Hartford Courant. - gdn443 - 06-27-2006
Conn. Scientists Investigate Marsh Die-Off7:31 AM EDT, June 27, 2006
By Associated Press MADISON, Conn. -- Something is killing New England's salt marshes, and scientists are trying to figure out how large the problem is, and how to stop it. Parts of the marshes, normally teeming with cord grass, fish and birds have turned mud brown and bare of life except for fiddler crabs.
"No one recalls seeing anything like this," Ron Rozsa, coastal ecologist with Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection, told the Day of New London as he surveyed a section of the Oyster River salt marsh in Old Saybrook. "We're talking about a crime scene investigation some forensic ecology, if you will."
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The marshes make up abut 10,000 acres along Connecticut's Long Island Sound coast.
They are considered the foundation of the marine food chain and buffer the shoreline against flooding and storms. A dieback has also been seen in brackish marshes, which have lower salinity and cover about 3,000 acres in the state.
But the problem is not limited to Connecticut. Dieback has been reported in all five of the coastal New England states and is most evident in the marshes of Cape Cod.
Dieback sites have also been documented on Long Island, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Louisiana where scientists call it brown marsh. It appears to have begun about seven years ago, occurring in isolated but, in some cases, relatively large patches, biologists say.
The dieback is causing erosion problems along the shore.
On healthy salt marshes, the smooth cord grass grows in a belt right up to water's edge, securing the marsh.
The death of the grasses effectively means that section of marsh ceases to exist as a productive habitat.
In a dieback site, irregular margins of gray-brown marsh soils are exposed, cut away by tides and waves that wash in during storms, forming terraced walls, trenches and caves in the creek banks.
"We don't know what's causing it, and we don't know how to stop it. Is it a disease, or a response to a combination of factors? We want to get a handle on what this thing is," said Susan Adamowicz, a land management research and demonstration biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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Re: [gdn443] Salt Marshes under attack.Story out of the Hartford Courant. - tomc - 06-27-2006
i woundnt be suprised if this is a natural event.natures way of getting ready for the water from the polar caps.since the earths temp is as hot as it was 400 years ago now they are blamming humans andcar/factory emmisions.so what made it that warm 400 years ago,horse and cow poop?dont get me wrong scientist do do good things and find causes /cures,but,when it is mother nature they are trying to figure out we are the first to blame.so some of the marshes are dieing off,my question what made the marshes.i am sure what we do speeds up the cycle,but i dont think we are the cause of every natural disaster
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Re: [tomc] Salt Marshes under attack.Story out of the Hartford Courant. - gdn443 - 06-28-2006
I agree Tom if it was manmade problem, you would think it would be isalated in a few spots, not the whole coast. Seeing as the CT. River is a whole lot cleaner than 20 years ago. Why blame us now?
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