Platforms Installed To Collect Coastal Data

Posted July 26th 2021

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and partners have installed seven platforms throughout local island waterways for coastal monitoring. The project is being conducted as part of the Seven Mile Island Innovation Lab (SMIIL), an initiative created to advance and improve dredging and marsh restoration techniques throughout the coastal waterways of New Jersey.
Each platform includes data-collection instruments that will help researchers study waterways, shallow tidal flats and wetlands, and monitor recent dredging and marsh restoration projects.

The Army Corps’ Philadelphia District maintains the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway and continues in an effort to utilize cleaned dredging material to help ecosystems and build coastal resiliency. The SMIIL was launched in 2019 with the Corps, the USACE Engineering Research & Development Center, the state, and The Wetlands Institute, and has since conducted eight dredging and marsh restoration projects. Benefits of the project include creating habitats for wading bird colonies, providing nesting sites for beach nesting birds, enhancing marsh resilience through elevation enhancement, restoring unvegetated mud flats to marsh habitat, and creating sandy marsh edge protection features.

“The Wetlands Institute is pleased to work side by side with federal and state partners to help advance the critical research and testing being done here,” said Dr. Lenore Tedesco, the institute’s executive director. “Serving as the field station for SMIIL research programs is bringing a significant investment and resources to our area to help mitigate the effects of sea-level rise and the impacts to area marshes.”

Boaters, kayakers, and others utilizing local waterways should steer clear of the new platforms to avoid disrupting data collection and research efforts. Go to wetlandsinstitute.org/SMIIL for more information.