For decades, salt marshes across New York City’s Jamaica Bay had been disappearing. At Big Egg Marsh, scientists decided to try something that could reveal whether one damaged piece of marsh could be given a better chance to survive. The solution was surprisingly simple, to raise the marsh.
Clean sand was dredged from a nearby creek and spread across part of the marsh. Then hundreds of volunteers planted thousands of young smooth cordgrass seedlings. But putting the pieces in place was only the beginning.
