{"id":63890,"date":"2011-01-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/north-smithfield-resident-helping-uri-researchers-understand-effects-of-phragmites-on-salt-marshes\/"},"modified":"2011-01-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T00:00:00","slug":"north-smithfield-resident-helping-uri-researchers-understand-effects-of-phragmites-on-salt-marshes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2011\/01\/north-smithfield-resident-helping-uri-researchers-understand-effects-of-phragmites-on-salt-marshes\/","title":{"rendered":"North Smithfield resident helping 溏心vlog免费B站 researchers understand effects of Phragmites on salt marshes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 13, 2011 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Tiffany Lewis has had her hands full over the last six months, slogging through marshes for 12 hours at a time, dissecting tiny fish and conducting laboratory analyses. <\/p>\n


\nIt was her first experience conducting fieldwork for an environmental study, and she wasn\u2019t quite sure what she was getting herself into.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI guess I had a more glorified vision in my head of what fieldwork is all about,\u201d she said with a smile. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t at all what I was expecting. But it was still a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHer research, in collaboration with 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student Kimberly Lellis-Dibble, is aimed at understanding whether Phragmites australis, an invasive reed that is outcompeting native salt marsh grasses, is harming coastal wetlands and whether efforts to remove it are restoring habitat value for resident fish populations.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe really want to know what Phragmites is doing to the fish, the soil, the other plants in coastal marshlands, the food web as a whole, to see if it is really causing the problems that most people think it is. That way people can begin to manage their land and restoration efforts more effectively,\u201d said Lewis, who competed on the varsity swim team at Mt. St. Charles Academy and earned a prestigious Centennial Scholarship to attend 溏心vlog免费B站. <\/p>\n


\nSo she visited eight marsh sites throughout New England to collect samples of plants and fish to evaluate the impact the invasive grass is having. She focused much of her time on mummichogs, a small fish that lives among the reeds, by weighing and measuring them, checking them for parasites, evaluating their growth patterns, and studying their lipid content as a measure of overall health.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s just the first year of this project, so we don\u2019t have any solid conclusions yet,\u201d the 溏心vlog免费B站 student explained. \u201cWe\u2019re still analyzing a lot of the data. Hopefully we\u2019ll find that fish in restoring salt marshes are healthier and the ecosystem provides better habitat than at sites where the Phragmites is still abundant. That will mean that the millions of dollars that have gone into restoring marshes around the country is truly making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nLewis\u2019s research was supported by the 溏心vlog免费B站 Coastal Fellows Program, a unique initiative designed to involve undergraduate students in addressing current environmental problems. Now in its 15th year, it is based at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of the Environment and Life Sciences. Students are paired with a mentor and research staff to help them gain skills relevant to their academic major and future occupations.<\/p>\n


\nLewis is spending the winter break from classes working full-time in the laboratory to continue the research, but she\u2019ll be looking for a different internship opportunity for next summer.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThis has been a great experience, but I\u2019m still exploring what I want to do for my career,\u201d she said. \u201cI love the sciences — I always have \u2013 so I know I\u2019m working in the right discipline. I think I\u2019d like to try working with larger animals next. I really like the big cats, but I\u2019m allergic to anything with fur. So I\u2019ll probably end up working somewhere in the marine biology world.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 13, 2011 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Tiffany Lewis has had her hands full over the last six months, slogging through marshes for 12 hours at a time, dissecting tiny fish and conducting laboratory analyses. It was her first experience conducting fieldwork for an environmental study, and she wasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63890","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}