Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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96 effort to drain the marsh, and in some cases control the mosquito population, vast re- ditching programs were launched. at ditch digging ramped up during the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration, and as a result, the marshes were over-ditched. Now those ditches are preventing the salt marshes from draining correctly and, as a consequence, may actually change the ecology of the Great Marsh. Species like the saltmarsh sparrow that depend on these marshes may become endangered. It's a problem that's exacerbated by sea level rise. "We're trying to fix a broken ecosystem because of these ditches," says Tom O'Shea, Coast and Natural Resources Program director for e Trustees. "Otherwise, without this, the marshes have a hard time with sea level rise." e idea of filling in the ditches to restore the marsh's natural hydrology isn't novel, but the proposed method for doing so is. Instead e method was first piloted on a smaller scale at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge in partnership with the University of New Hamp- sire, and the results were extremely promis- ing, Hopping and O'Shea say. But this project is different, not only in its scale—the goal is to eventually restore more than 300 acres of the Great Marsh—but also as a test of permitting and regulations for this new method, as well as the ways that multiple stakeholders, includ- ing partners like the DER, can work together to improve the resiliency of natural resources. In addition, if the project proves success- ful and cost-effective, O'Shea thinks it can be scaled up, perhaps even nationally. Along the way, e Trustees can "can offer our proper- ties as a living laboratory," he says. He notes that e Trustees protects 15 percent of the Great Marsh, and manages 120 miles of Mas- sachusetts coastline. e Trustees has also seen firsthand the of using dirt or manmade materials to fill them in, which is prohibited by the Massachu- setts Wetlands Protection Act, the project will use layers of salt marsh hay that are loosely woven together and placed at the bottom of the ditches. Over time, sediment from the moving tides will naturally settle between fibers, forming a peatlike substrate that closely resembles the natural substrates that the marsh creates on its own. Depending on their depth, some ditches might need several treatments of built-up hay, but eventually, native vegetation will begin to colonize and the ditches will be filled in, allowing the marsh to drain the way it's supposed to. Russ Hopping, Ecology Program direc- tor for e Trustees, says the method closely replicates the marsh's natural processes. "Na- ture's already good at healing itself," he adds. is method "just gives nature an edge."