Project Title: Comparison of Carbon Stock in Pannes and Adjacent Marsh
Duration: July 2024 to June 2025
Funding Source(s): MIT Energy Initiative Shell Corporation Seed Funding
Principal Investigator(s):
Co-Lead Investigator / onsite-contact: Heidi Nepf
Affiliation: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: hmnepf@mit.edu
Co- Lead Investigator / onsite-contact: Juliet Simpson
Affiliation: MIT SeaGrant
Email: simpsonj@mit.edu
Project Description: To facilitate more accurate carbon accounting, we need to quantify the spatial heterogeneity in carbon stock across a marsh and to understand the sources of this heterogeneity. In the long term, we hope to link this understanding to drone images, which will lead to methods for mapping the expected sources of carbon heterogeneity on a marsh. The drone mapping is part of a separate study lead by Ernie Lee and Heidi Nepf.
In the present study we will explore the influence of pannes on carbon stock. We have designed an initial experiment that will use sediment cores to compare the carbon stock within a panne to that in an adjacent marsh. We used aerial images to identify a region on the marsh where the edge of the panne has migrated in recent years. The panne outline in 2013 is shown with a red line in both the 2013 and 2024 image. We plane to collect three cores each at the sites marked 1, 2, 3, which represent 1) a site that remained vegetated, 2) a site that was open water in 2013 and is vegetated in 2024, and 3) a site that remained as open water.
