Climate Change Challenge
Coastal flooding, sea level rise
Project Alignment with ResilientMass Plan Priority Actions
Habitat and Species Conservation, Great Marsh Ecosystem Recovery Project
Climate Resilience Project Scope
ResilientMass funds were used for a variety of actions related to restoration of the Great Marsh, located off the northern coast. In FY25, MassWildlife selected Northeast Wetlands Restoration as the contractor to complete the 4th project funded by Resilient Mass for an additional 2,000 acres of nature-based salt marsh restoration preliminary designs. This now brings the total design acres funded by Resilient Mass to 7,293 acres. This represents 45% of Great Marsh which is estimated to have 16,000 total acres of salt marsh.
SMARTeams Academy (Salt Marsh Adaptation and Resiliency Teams) was also started by MassWildlife to address the need for accelerated, coordinated, and consistent large-scale restoration by coastal salt marsh practitioners. Spring 2025 was the first year of this unique salt marsh restoration training program. This was year 1 of a 3-year continuing education program with the goal of creating fifteen teams drawn from three cohorts to assist and provide consistency on landscape-level tidal marsh restoration projects over the next several decades. Twenty-two attendees came from state and federal agencies, and non-profit organizations, all actively working in salt marsh restoration. Seven staff from the MA Department of Environmental Protection attended, which will benefit the regulatory review of restoration projects. Instructors came from the University of New Hampshire, USFWS, Northeast Wetlands Restoration, The Nature Conservancy, and Save the Bay having over 100 years of combined salt marsh science and restoration experience.
Lastly, monitoring is required as part of large-scale salt marsh restoration projects to ensure success, inform adaptive management, and protect habitat for wildlife, especially the endemic saltmarsh sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta; SALS). In this novel project, working with UMass, drones were fitted with thermal and acoustic sensors to test the efficacy of this technology to complement monitoring SALS at a landscape scale. The focus of the project was to explore the specific protocols and sampling parameters that would need to be fine-tuned to have the best chance of detecting SALS populations or probable SALS populations. A multistage protocol for detecting and identifying SALS was implemented.
Metrics and Results
Number of acres restored, number of students taught, number of sparrow present
Best Practices and Lessons Learned
For future workshop series, 83% of students agreed that a schedule of 4 – 5 days of presentations or field trips over the course of a year would better fit their schedule and improve their attendance. Another suggestion for the future workshop series is to provide more tailored lectures or background information about field trips during the in-class presentations.
Further Action
There are approximately 42,000 acres of salt marsh in Massachusetts and all are impacted by historic agriculture and mosquito ditching. That leaves most salt marshes needing assessments and development of designs.