WaterMarks Interview: Charles Sasser, Ph.D.
Dr. Charles Sasser has conducted coastal wetland research at LSU for more than 25 years, and has been highly active in the field. He has served as principal investigator and in other capacities on numerous grants and contracts involving wetlands conservation and monitoring, and has authored or co-authored dozens of publications on related topics. Dr. Sasser is a member of the Technical Advisory Group and the Academic Advisory Group that support the CWPPRA task force.
Along with others, I provide ecological assistance to the CWPPRA program. In regards to monitoring, I’m a member of TAG, on which I serve as a wetland ecologist. We meet as necessary to review and discuss topics such as monitoring plans for CWPPRA projects.
As situations arise that might benefit from the participation of academic scientists, I am also in a group of academic folks who provide assistance. An example of an activity that our academic group has been involved with is reviewing projects and project data from an adaptive management point of view. More recently, many of the people in this group have been involved in supporting Louisiana Coastal Area study activities, analyzing information related to the LCA effort, and assisting in the preparation of various ecological documents required.
Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are a very complex system, with a lot of important variables. Working to understand details related to our coastal wetlands loss and the processes that are important drivers of the system, and implementing effective solutions is challenging work. But there are also rewards when you see some of the significant accomplishments that are being made.
It’s exciting to be a part of a program that’s moving forward in many ways toward the overall goal of coastal restoration. CRMS-Wetlands is a very good example. We’ve been working toward developing this approach and getting it set up for a number of years. Though we’re not quite there yet, we’re on the verge of seeing it implemented.
Although I interact directly with landowners only on occasion, overall the people I talk with are appreciative and supportive of coastal restoration efforts. However, I do sometimes hear questions and concerns about monitoring. Some may have a desire to get more projects on the ground and running, as opposed to spending any time and effort monitoring.
But it’s important to think also in terms of the benefits we’ll get down the road by gaining a better understanding of the system with which we’re dealing. We need to know more completely how the system works, why it’s changed over time, and which types of restoration projects work better. Data collected and analyzed through the monitoring program help us understand our coastal wetland ecosystem at a level where we can be much more effective in restoring the entire system. If that means that we have to learn some things before we can go full steam ahead, I think it’s time well spent.
The monitoring systems in place until now are tied to individual projects, and have done what they were designed to do. But that type of monitoring does not provide the data to make larger-scale evaluations and comparisons that are also important. The goal of CWPPRA is to restore the coast, so it’s important to determine what’s happening not just on a specific project, but on a much larger scale as well—across an entire basin, for example, or across the entire Louisiana coastline. CRMS will allow us to do that, and enable us to look at how ecological conditions are changing over time.
Like previous monitoring, CRMS-Wetlands data will provide a snapshot of where a particular site is at a given time, in terms of certain variables. But it will also provide data about the ecological condition of the Louisiana coast over time, and as enough data are collected, the data will also allow comparisons of the trajectories of change between different projects, whether grouped by project type, basin, or other factors. Because coastal marshes are dynamic, we can expect variation to exist even in natural or non-project areas. Evaluating and comparing the trajectories of project sites along with reference sites will provide a better view of how the coastal marshes are responding, and will be of great use in determining the success of restoration efforts.