{"id":108040,"date":"2026-04-06T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=108040"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:26:09","slug":"nature-conservancy-award-supports-uri-research-on-salt-marsh-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2026\/04\/nature-conservancy-award-supports-uri-research-on-salt-marsh-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature Conservancy award supports 溏心vlog免费B站 research on salt marsh health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 6, 2026 \u2013 Rhode Island\u2019s salt marshes protect coastlines and provide critical habitat, but many are increasingly threatened by sea level rise and other environmental pressures. Madison Geraci, a Ph.D. student in evolution and marine biology<\/a> at the 溏心vlog免费B站, is studying organisms hidden within marsh sediments to better understand how these ecosystems respond to stress and restoration efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her work recently received a student award from the Nature Conservancy that will help expand an innovative approach to monitoring marsh health across Rhode Island.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
溏心vlog免费B站 Ph.D. student Madison Geraci (shown at Quonochontaug) recently received a Nature Conservancy award to study how local salt marshes respond to restoration and environmental change. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At the center of Geraci\u2019s research are foraminifera, microscopic single-celled organisms that scientists increasingly recognize as powerful environmental indicators of marsh health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey’re like a canary in the coal mine,\u201d she said. \u201cThey’re really sensitive to salinity, sea level rise, coastal acidification, and pollution, and they can tell us a lot about marshes’ overall health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional monitoring often focuses on marsh vegetation, but microbial communities may reveal ecological stress much earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nature Conservancy funding will help pay for the genetic sequencing needed to identify microbial communities. \u201cSequencing can be expensive, so the award allows us to do this work on a broader scale,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After collecting sediment samples from marshes across the state, Geraci and her collaborators use a method called metabarcoding\u2014a type of DNA sequencing\u2014to identify organisms living in the samples. \u201cWe’re using a tool called metabarcoding to take a sediment sample, extract it, and then tag all the different forams that might be there and determine their overall diversity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her research focuses on marsh restoration projects that add thin layers of sediment to help raise marsh elevation and counteract sea level rise. By comparing restored and non-restored marshes, the team hopes to understand how ecosystems respond to these interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe go out into these either restored or non-restored marshes locally to assess what their overall ecosystem health is, inform people where the marsh is going, or how the restoration is affecting the marsh,\u201d Geraci said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project brings together scientists from multiple organizations, including Kenneth Raposa at the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and Decatur Foster, a conservation biologist with the United States Environmental Protection Agency. By pairing her microbial analysis with other monitoring efforts, Geraci hopes to create a faster and more responsive way to evaluate restoration projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHopefully we can make a more robust long-term tool that an agency like the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management could implement for themselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the most meaningful experiences of her work have come from time spent in the marsh when community members stop to ask about her research. \u201cOne of the best parts of my research is interacting with the people and learning how they connect with the marsh throughout their life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one field visit, she spoke with a longtime resident who had watched the marsh change dramatically over decades. \u201cThey remembered the salt marsh being a lot healthier with a lot more shellfish,\u201d Geraci said. \u201cThey were appreciative that someone was looking into it, but they were also sad that they no longer could enjoy the same thing that they used to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those conversations reinforce why understanding marsh ecosystems matters, she said, not only for scientists but for the communities who depend on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping to detect the signals of stress in a marsh before larger changes, such as vegetation loss or erosion really become visible,\u201d Geraci said. \u201cThis work helps us guide decisions to keep Rhode Island\u2019s marshes healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was written by Anna Gray in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 6, 2026 \u2013 Rhode Island\u2019s salt marshes protect coastlines and provide critical habitat, but many are increasingly threatened by sea level rise and other environmental pressures. Madison Geraci, a Ph.D. student in evolution and marine biology at the 溏心vlog免费B站, is studying organisms hidden within marsh sediments to better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":108041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1907,5,1914,1905],"class_list":["post-108040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-academic-excellence","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences","tag-graduate","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108045,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108040\/revisions\/108045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}