Five years ago, the Coalition convened a team of scientists to pilot a technique called “runneling” at Ocean View Farm in Dartmouth to see what impact they might have on the rate of salt marsh loss the Bay is experiencing due to climate-change-driven sea level rise. More inundation leaves more water stranded on our marshes, which doesn’t drain fully when the tide recedes, and drowns swaths of marsh grass.

That team, including Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Vice President of Bay Science Rachel Jakuba and colleagues from Northeastern and Towson universities, Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program, and Woodwell Climate Research Center, recently published its findings in an article titled “Salt marsh decomposition after hydrologic restoration with runnels” in this month’s issue of Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.

Increased impounded water on marsh surfaces has long been known to drown vegetation thus minimizing the marsh’s ability to store carbon. But few solutions were available, until scientists began investigating runneling, designed to restore salt marsh habitat by reestablishing a tidal connection between impounded water and existing, natural drainage.

Runnels were used successfully at two Massachusetts sites—Ocean View and Little Bay in Fairhaven—to restore important salt marsh habitat by restoring tidal flow while not “dramatically affecting sediment characteristics or rates of carbon decomposition.” The study provides additional justification for interventions such as runneling as a means of ‘buying time’ for marshes against sea level rise. Read the article here.