Merryl Alber
University of Georgia, GA·Ecology & Evolution
Estuaries, where ocean salt water mixes with river fresh water, and the marshes and tidal forests beside them, feed fish, shellfish and birds. They also buffer shorelines from storms, clean water and store carbon.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
coastal wetlands
salt marsh
estuaries
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Characterize how the averages and variability of drivers such as sea level, salinity and flooding change across space and time on the Georgia coast, and integrate these dynamics through modeling.
- Test whether accounting for variability in salinity and inundation improves predictions of wetland responses, using long-term data, field campaigns across contrasting sites and mechanistic experiments.
- Track how natural disturbances and ongoing experimental manipulations change patterns of variability in marsh and estuarine ecological responses.
- Determine whether ecological variability increases near habitat transitions, using remote sensing, sampling across salinity and flooding gradients, and new forest sites tracking upland marsh migration.
- Relate net ecosystem exchange, plant biomass and remotely sensed marsh productivity to salinity, inundation and temperature, and predict how carbon stocks may change.
More about the research
Sea level, temperature, storms and human land use are all changing, and not only on average. High tides have risen over the past decade, and extreme flooding events have become more frequent, which can drown wetlands. The Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research (GCE LTER) program, based at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, has studied these systems since 2000.
Why it matters
Coastal wetlands support fisheries, protect shorelines from storms, clean water and store carbon. Better predictions of how marshes and tidal forests respond to rising and more variable tides, salinity and storms could help coastal managers anticipate wetland loss. Variability-based early warning signs could flag stressed wetlands before they drown.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
James Morris
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether salt marsh elevation gain is driven by belowground biomass production of Spartina alterniflora and scales with net ecosystem production, using long-term North Inlet measurements.
Samantha Chapman
Villanova University, PA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether excess nitrogen loading disrupts the soil accumulation that lets coastal wetlands keep up with sea level rise, using experimental nitrogen additions at creekside and interior field plots.
Jessica Sullivan
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Measure how subtle marsh elevation and drainage patterns control water flow across the marsh surface, sediment buildup and how long water stays, across a salt marsh to forest gradient in the ACE Basin, South Carolina.
The school
University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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