Why Scientists Find Smelly Salt Marshes 'Beautiful'

Salt marshes have a dismal image. People usually think of them as a "hot, buggy, muggy, muddy, smelly, harsh and dismal environment." Does that seem to be true? Certainly, it does - at least in the summers.

It is certainly what Linda Blum, a University of Virginia environmental scientist thought till the mid-1980s. She started an ecological research into these tricky salt marshes in the Eastern Shore's Virginia Coast Reserve.

But she actually found the salt marshes not "dismal and uninviting" but actually "intrinsically beautiful," she said. While the marshes appeared lush and green and also had a "rotten egg smell" she confirmed that at least they did seem to offer a habitat for a wide range of organisms. She explained, "I love salt marshes."

Salt marshes are coastal wetlands. They tend to get overwhelmed when they are flooded. They also get drained when salt water is brought in with tidal waves, according to National Ocean Service.

She began to study the grasses and ecosystems on the mud banks near the barrier islands of Virginia as well as other places. She said that coastal salt marshes offer wonderful ecosystems. They act as buffers to preserve the land from storms. They also reduce the flow of freshwater flowing into the coasts and make water pure by removing excess nitrogen, Blum said. She added that as they are "aesthetically pleasing habitats" they offer biodiversity as well as a lot of ecological services.

They not only offer a good habitat for aquatic and marine species, such as fish, crabs, clams and oysters but also give good cover and nesting sites for many species of birds and mammals. The salt marshes manage to get and store carbon too, which offers great promise for climate change.

As salt marsh grasses thrive under shallow, salty water and also send "emergent stems" their role in building up the inner coastlands is significant. They convert forests into fertile grasslands.

"A key question we are seeking to answer is: What is the maximum rate of sea-level rise that marshes can tolerate through soil accretion?" Blum said. "The marshes must be able to keep up by growing both horizontally and vertically as the seas rise."

It is important that salt marshes have a strong root system so that they can spread with more shoots and expand their range, she said. "We're developing new techniques in the lab for better measuring the volume of marsh grass roots, which provides clues to their capability for surviving rising waters," according to Phys.org.

With UVA's Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center, Blum is using CT scans to examine core salt marsh samples. She finds that the highly detailed 3-D cross-section images offer more data, compared to the hand separation method.