Marshlands

 Definitions:

- Marsh: is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species. Marshes can often be found at the edges of lakes and streams, where they form a transition between the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are often dominated by grasses, rushes or reeds

- Salt Marsh: an area of coastal grass land that is regularly flooded by seawater

NYC Marshlands:

Gothamist Article (Link): https://gothamist.com/news/parks-department-conservationists-release-30-year-plan-protect-nyc-wetlands#comments

Parks Department, Conservationists Release 30-Year Plan To Protect NYC Wetlands

• Over the last 400 years, development, pollution, landfill and erosion destroyed 85 percent of the city’s salt marshes and 99 percent of its freshwater wetlands. Dozens of acres are lost every year across the five boroughs. Only 5,650 acres now remain, which would cover about a third of Manhattan.
• Create a more stable future for these endangered ecosystems
• Created by the Natural Areas Conservancy and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, this 30-year plan identifies more than 300 acres of wetland restoration projects—about the size of the Financial District—in NYC Parks properties. The proposal highlights the need for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to preserve, restore and manage the region’s wetlands and streams.
• The city’s waterfront is facing a critical moment. Sea levels are expected to begin rising at an accelerated rate, inundating the coast and drowning its salt marshes. In the next 30 years, the New York City Panel on Climate Change projects that the city will experience up to 2.5 feet of rising coastal waters
• Several communities in New York City are currently undergoing a managed retreat from sea level rise, and hundreds of houses in Staten Island have already been demolished and replaced by wetlands as part of a New York state buyout program.
• “Everything we have left is critically important because everything we have left is just a tiny fraction of the historic biodiversity that we had in our city,” said Sarah Charlop-Powers, the executive director of the Natural Areas Conservancy and one of the report’s authors. “There is an urgency, due to wetland loss and habitat loss and sea level rise, to not sit on this plan for a decade, but to begin to move on implementing these recommendations in the short term.”
• Revitalizing wetlands is not an easy or inexpensive process. It can cost between $1.5 million to $2 million to restore just one acre of marshland. But according to the new analysis, these ecosystems are vital habitats for more than 325 species of birds, 315 species of plants and 200 species of fish and shellfish. Coastal marshlands also provide a crucial buffer from storm surges, reducing the impact of waves and flooding.
• The new salt marsh under development here aims to mitigate the impacts of a sewage project in the neighborhood, where the Department of Environmental Protection replaced a different section of marshland with a stormwater outfall pipe. It will take years of work and millions of dollars to transform this one acre of landfill back into a healthy salt marsh habitat. (Talking specifically about Fresh Creek, an inlet on the north side of Jamaica Bay)
  
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