Welcome, readers, to Marsh Life.
Who are we? We are a team of researchers from the Byrnes lab at University of Massachusetts in Boston working in the salty mud and grass around New England. And we’re here on a mission: to relay the beauty and complexity of life in the salt marsh through stories, pictures, videos, and our experiences of #marshlife.
Why marshes? Glad you asked. Salt marshes are some of the most important coastal ecosystems in the world! They absorb massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, sponge up terrestrial runoff, and are juvenile fish/shrimp/crab/bug/spider factories.
So what will you get from us? Our vision for this blog is:
- Telling tales of our innovative and (sometimes) strange methods we use to sample marsh life
- Raising awareness about the benefits New England marshes provide and the threats they face
- Sharing the natural history stories of organisms living the marsh life
- Sharing the unnatural history stories of our own attempt and living the marsh life
- Revealing insights on current trends and recent developments in the science of salt marshes
Everyone on Team Marsh will chime in once in a while, so you can hear our stories from different points of view. We all look at marsh life with different eyes, after all.
This blog is supported by MIT SeaGrant as a part of our project Food Web Structure as a Driver of Multiple Ecosystem Functions in New England Salt Marsh Ecosystems. The design was provided by our wonderful REU Victoria Silverman.
So, enjoy our story of life in the marsh. We hope you enjoy every bug-covered, mud-filled, sun-splotched minute of it. We sure do.