The Community Science Salt Marsh Restoration and Monitoring Project engages volunteers as part of an overall initiative to support habitat resiliency and ecosystem services throughout an urbanized watershed in Charleston County, S.C. Local communities assist with several aspects of salt marsh restoration, including building oyster reefs and cultivating and transplanting smooth cord grass (Sporobolus alterniflorus, formerly Spartina alterniflora). Volunteers also are trained in data collection methods, including use of the Anecdata© smartphone app to capture the number of Sporobolus alterniflora seeds collected and the crop yield of young plants. In addition, volunteers are trained to collect long-term monitoring data at the restored salt marsh locations.
This project is a three-year initiative (2019 – 2022) that is supported through a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) grant awarded to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. Partners on this project include the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium (Consortium), South Carolina Aquarium, and Clemson University Cooperative Extension. The project expands upon the Consortium’s From Seeds to Shoreline® (S2S) program model, which engages K-12 students and teachers in cultivating and transplanting Sporobolus alterniflora, to include adult volunteers from local Charleston-area communities.