Assisted Marsh Migration

Assisted marsh migration is a strategy of marsh conservation that works with the inland movement of coastal marshes as a response to rising sea levels. Within a marsh, the plants closer to the coastline are more frequently inundated with water and are thus more salt tolerant (Vanderveer 2023). However, sea level rise has resulted in both high and low tides moving further up the shoreline, flooding a greater percentage of the marsh. In response to this, marsh plants begin to naturally move into upland zones, seeking conditions that best match their desired salinity and water exposure (LCCN n.d.). Barriers such as seawalls, roads, canals, and homes can prevent marsh from migrating inland, resulting in loss of marsh habitat with sea level rise. Assisted marsh migration often consists of creating marsh migration corridors, moving infrastructure, removing invasive species, transplanting plants, and digging runnels (Bergeson 2023, Vanderveer 2023).