Seagrass Restoration
Restoration and transplantation of seagrass meadow is also important to enhance the blue carbon sequestration. An appropriate current regime is critical for eelgrass transplant success. If current velocities are high in the vicinity of the transplant site, transplant success will be poor due to loss of transplant units, and coalescence may never occur. Likewise, if current velocities are low, sedimentation may occur and suffocate the newly transplanted beds. We used artificial seagrass to create hydrodynamic conditions favorable to restoration success at multiple sites in Massachusetts, including Plum Island, Essex River, and Annisquam River.
Blue Carbon
Seagrass meadows help to moderate climate change by sequestering large amounts of carbon, called blue carbon. More than half of the carbon stored in seagrass soils originates outside the meadow, such that carbon storage capacity depends on the tendency for a meadow to capture and retain suspended particles. To accurately assess the global seagrass carbon stocks, it is crucial to understand the spatial heterogeneity of particle retention within individual meadows. Sediment cores at different water depths were taken within a natural seagrass bed in Nahant, MA, to examine the variation in particle retention from the edge to the interior of the seagrass meadow.