The New York City area is not known for its beautiful salt marsh areas, but I promise you, they do exist. Before the arrival of our European ancestors, the New York coastline had a healthy fringe of squishy, muddy, and vibrant salt marshes. Today, the majority of this habitat is gone and the slivers that survive today are in need of some attention. In light of recent extreme weather patterns, the importance of coastal habitat has received much-needed media coverage. This brought about proposals to incorporate a little more green to the toothy grin of lower Manhattan. But before we indulge our dreams of ripping up that parking lot and paving a new paradise, we should focus on what already exists.
Jamaica Bay is a large marsh system on the backside of Brooklyn and next to Far Rockaway that has been crumbling for years. Researchers and managers have been scrambling to understand this rapid loss to no end. Luckily Jamaica Bay has garnered support from the City of New York and its surrounding community to restore and preserve it. There are restoration sites on existing or remnant wetland habitats throughout the 5 boroughs. Columbia University even has a small salt marsh restoration project, called the Boathouse Marsh, on the Harlem River adjacent to the athletic facilities and Inwood Hill Park.
Restoration work is not cheap in cost, time, or labor. Usually a restoration project will involve rebuilding of the marsh soils through dredging and replacement of sediment onto the marsh and in some cases a channel will need to be re-established to increase tidal exchange. The key ingredient is vegetation, usually in the form of Spartina or other native species, replanted in high densities. Plants can be brought in from other healthy marshes nearby that have plants to spare or there are nurseries that grow and sell plants or seed to grow your own. Plants are key players in the survival of the marsh as they stabilizes the peat through their root systems, capture sediment by slowing down water flow, and provide food and habitat for many other important organisms such as invertebrates, fish, and birds. These restoration projects take a good amount of time to implement and they require constant checkups and monitoring long after the restoration work is done to ensure that they remain intact.
While the grandiose plans to extend lower Manhattan by a few blocks to install a salt marsh and build floating marine vegetation islands to absorb the brunt of storm surges is valid and important to the future of New York and its natural landscape, it is also important to focus on the marshes that already exist. It seems like New York is off to a good start and is headed in the right direction.
Additional resources:
A Graduate Student in the Marsh 