The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently awarded over $750,000 in grants for wetlands research in New Jersey, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
Each of the funds come through EPA’s Wetland Program Development Grants program. N.J. will use the funds to perform research on wetlands' functions under climate change, while the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico will aim to update the United States Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetland Inventory maps for their respective regions.
New Jersey
The N.J. Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA) received two grants totaling $347,535, and the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection received one grant for $102,509.
“New Jersey’s wetlands are critical to supporting healthy aquatic ecosystems as well as providing flood and erosion control, stabilizing shorelines, and supplying food and habitat for fish and wildlife,” said EPA Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “These grants will help improve protections for and scientific understanding of wetlands in New Jersey.”
NJEA’s first grant, of $179,454, will help the authority measure the sustainability of marshes under future sea-level rise conditions in the Meadowlands of the state. The authority will measure indicators of marsh resilience to identify any marshes in the region that have the best chance of persisting under sea-level rise.
NJEA’s second grant, of $168,081, will support a project to understand how Sawmill Creek could be adapted to lessen climate change weaknesses. The project will assess the Meadowlands’ Sawmill Creak Wildlife Management Area to understand the site’s vulnerability to climate change’s impacts. NJEA will also estimate the current carbon storage of the area and its potential to capture carbon dioxide in the future.
The N.J. Department of Environmental Protection’s $102,509 grant will help provide a baseline documentation for salt marsh ponds as potential reservoirs of harmful algal blooms, under climate change conditions, for the state’s coastal ecosystems. The project includes sampling salt marsh ponds on the Tuckerton Peninsula for HAB species and developing a website to host project results and distribution maps.
Puerto Rico
The Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources received a grant for over $200,000 to generate updated National Wetland Inventory (NWI) spatial data for the territory. Current wetland inventories are decades out of date.
As part of the update, DNER will use remote imagery to delineate the boundaries of wetlands and classify what type of wetland they are. In Puerto Rico there are tidal, forested, and scrub-shrub wetlands, as well as other types of wetlands. The remote imaging will then be confirmed with field visits. This will improve knowledge of wetland distribution for regulators and the general public which will, in turn, improve the ability to monitor and assess wetlands in Puerto Rico.
“Wetlands in Puerto Rico are critical to supporting healthy aquatic ecosystems as well as providing flood and erosion control, stabilizing shorelines, and supplying food and habitat for fish and wildlife,” said EPA Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “These grants will help improve scientific understanding of wetlands in Puerto Rico.”
Virgin Islands
The U.S. Virgin Islands received a grant for over $65,000 to update its own NWI. The update will also use remote imagery to delineate between tidal and scrub-shrub wetlands, and confirm the delineation with field visits
