GCE Announcement
Announcement
PNAS paper
GCE-affiliated researchers have published a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the patterns and trends of belowground biomass in salt marshes. The team, led by Kyle Runion (UT Austin, now a Research Scientist at UGA) and Jessica O’Connell (Colorado State), used the Belowground Ecosystem Resiliency Model (BERM) to estimate both above- and belowground biomass of Spartina marshes along the entire Georgia coast (691 km2) over a ten-year period (2014-2023). They found that a decline in belowground material often preceded above-ground loss, making it an important indicator of marsh vulnerability. Other authors of the paper were Merryl Alber, Deepak Mishra, Mark Lever, and Christine Hladik. You can read more about it here: https://source.colostate.edu/early-signs-coastal-marsh-decline/ and access the paper itself here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2425501122
Congratulations Kyle!
Kyle Runion
(Contact Merryl Alber for additional information)
submitted Jun 24, 2025
