Salt Marsh Monitoring

Duration:

2 minutes, 58 seconds

A closer look at how SWAN scientists survey plots along the Cook Inlet Coast.

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Spruce establishment on beach ridges along Chinitna Bay, LACL, over a 50 year period. Air photos from 1955 and 1980 were orthorectified (geometrically corrected) to an IKONOS base image from 2005 to estimate changes in tree cover. Spruce tree cover expanded approximately 7% between 1955 and 2005.

Salt marshes are extremely dynamic ecosystems, located at the interface of land and sea. An analysis of air photos taken over a 50-year period (1955-2005) has shown measurable change in these systems, including channel abandonment and spruce establishment on beach ridges. Salt marsh communities are highly diverse, ranging from tidally-inundated sedge meadows to shrub-dominated bogs. The salt marsh monitoring sites are revisited every ten years, and where possible, aerial photos and climate data from tools like Remote Area Weather Stations (RAWS) and Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are used to interpret change over time.

Monitoring salt marshes in the Lake Clark focuses on the major habitat characteristics that are important to brown bears, seabirds, invertebrates and other park resources. Tectonic uplift, erosion, geomorphic processes, changing topography and hydrology, tidal fluctuations and storm surges all drive ecologic change in this sensitive plant community.

NPS scientists for the Southwest Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network (SWAN) are conducting monitoring in Lake Clark at Chinitna Bay and Silver Salmon along with other places at Katmai and Kenai Fjords. Learn more about this decadal study and the importance of coastal sedge meadows by watching the "Salt Marsh Shorts."

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 2 seconds

SWAN Ecologist Mike walks us through the small and large-scale benefits that the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve salt marshes provide to us all.

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