New Long-Term Monitoring Plots for Marsh Migration

Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR) staff assisted Dr. Serina Wittyngham of the University of North Florida with fieldwork on the Guana Peninsula as part of a long-term monitoring project tracking marsh migration into upland areas. The project addresses a pressing coastal management question for the reserve: as flooding increases and salt marsh transitions into mangrove habitat in Northeast Florida, coastal stakeholders may need to address ecosystem service trade-offs as habitats shift. Long-term monitoring of vegetation, soil, elevation, and slope across the marsh-to-forest transition helps natural resource managers understand the rate and drivers of this migration and informs future management decisions.  

Over a three-day period, Dr. Wittyngham and her students established Surface Elevation Tables (SETs) and shallow wells in the marsh, transition, and forest zones to measure surface elevation change alongside already-established vegetation surveys, allowing staff to directly link shifts in plant communities to the elevation gains or losses. Dr. Keith Ashley, a professor of Archaeology at UNF, assisted monitoring the installation of SETs and wells for any archeological impacts. Students surveyed vegetation and soil hydrology at four 10-meter by 10-meter plots positioned along transects that span from low marsh into the uplands, capturing how plant and soil communities shift as water reaches higher elevations. Allix North, ORCP UAS Program Coordinator, also collected unmanned aerial system (UAS) imagery at each plot, which will support detection of ecological change across these transects over time.

This fieldwork contributes to GTMNERR's broader long-term infrastructure for tracking marsh migration, and this infrastructure gives the reserve a consistent, repeatable way to track how marsh migration unfolds over time.