A Silver Lining
---Part 6 of a 6-Part Series---
If storm clouds tend to contain silver linings, then perhaps the research teams engaged in the Brown Marsh Project are beginning to realize that droughts can harbor them as well. Given the enormity of the problem undertaken, confronting the brown marsh dieback has also produced enormous results for Louisiana's coastal science community.
Susan Heyel, a reseach associate participating in Twilley's greenhouse studies, using ink to stain microrhizal fungi. A recent graduate with a MS in Biology with Old Dominion University, Heyel was instrumental in arranging the physical design of the greenhouse experiments.
Greg Grandy, the lead manager for the entire Brown Marsh Project, notes that, "The quality and pace with which we've conducted our research has really put Louisiana's coastal science program on the map." And given that wetlands across the world, from Holland to Vietnam, are facing land-loss challenges similar to those found in south Louisiana, the map Grandy speaks of is not simply national in scope but global. If the brown marsh phenomenon should pop up anywhere across the globe in the near future, those called in to solve the problem will owe a sizable debt to the work done in south Louisiana.
Achieving an international profile, aside from the pride those involved can rightly take from it, also brings a much-needed focus to the larger plight facing Louisiana's coastline. For the better part of two decades now, wetland researchers in the state have been sounding alarms over the vanishing coast, only to find that warnings were falling largely on deaf ears. But the quality of the team-oriented, rapid-response science that has addressed the crisis has assured that these concerns are now being met with an increased measure of respect.
Several of the graduate students working on Twilley's greenhouse study.
Another benefit is the unparalleled hands-on opportunity this has given a younger generation of researchers. Given the sheer amount of individual publications that brown marsh research has produced and will continue to generate, recent graduates in a wide range of wetland-related fields, along with graduate students, are carving out research niches that may well have taken their mentors the better part of a decade to achieve early in their careers. This early opportunity, as Robert Twilley notes, "helps guarantee that a strong field of researchers will be in place as wetland restoration efforts continue to move forward."
In the face of a continuing decline in coastal wetlands acreage, Louisiana is on the verge of what may prove to be the largest ecological restoration effort in history. Decades of research and over 12 years of the Breaux Act's applied efforts to assist those areas under the greatest threat have taught Louisiana's coastal preservation community a good deal about what works and what doesn't.
Recent graduates in a wide range of wetland-related fields, along with graduate students, are carving out research niches that may well have taken their mentors the better part of a decade to achieve early in their careers
Under the auspices of the Coast 2050 Feasibility Study, a task force that includes several researchers involved in the Brown Marsh Project, the state of Louisiana, with cooperation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is in the midst of putting together a scientific, engineering, and design proposal that will be sent to the U. S. Congress requesting some $14 - $15 billion dollars for wetlands restoration in Louisiana. By comparison, Florida's Everglades Project, which is currently the largest ecological restoration project in U.S. history, is being funded to the tune of $7.5 billion.
As far as the dieback itself is concerned, we will all have to wait until the Brown Marsh Project's final reports are published in the spring of 2003 to find out the certainty with which any ultimate causes can be ascribed. But two things seem to be clear at this point.
The first is that should the phenomenon ever strike south Louisiana again, the state will have both a broad knowledge-base and specific remediation strategies at its disposal, resources that were not there before. The other is that the Louisiana coastal science community has left its stamp on the world of multi-disciplinary ecosystem study and is fully prepared to do whatever it takes in order to save the vanishing treasure that is the state's coast.
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