Stewardship Team Tackles Marsh Monitoring

The Stewardship team is in the process of installing and reading emergent marsh plots to support the habitat monitoring portion of the Sentinel Site program. Marsh plots are being installed in transects of three at each Surface Elevation Table site, each transect has at least nine plots. These plots will be measured and photographed annually. Transects span vegetation shifts across each site. The purpose of measuring these marsh plots is to track changes in vegetation over time and relate changes in vegetation to potential changes in water level and inundation patterns. Specific measurements taken at each square meter plot include: species presence, species percent cover, stem density, and canopy height. Ground water wells are also being installed adjacent to each plot, which will be measured for ground water level and salinity.

Stewardship staff taking elevation measurements, installing groundwater wells, and taking a plot ID picture.

This image was taken with a special camera that collects images with a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index sensor. The NDVI is a measure of vegetation stress.