Former NE CASC Fellow's Groundbreaking Research on Sediment and Coastal Wetlands Featured in Eos

Coastal wetlands such as salt marshes, deltas, and mudflats provide enormous benefits for fish, wildlife and people. In addition to serving as essential habitat for finfish, shellfish and migratory bird species, wetlands also combat climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere and acting as a buffer against sea level rise. To maintain their health and stability, these ecologically and economically important areas depend upon a steady supply of sediment, which prevents them from becoming completely inundated. 

A new study by former NE CASC fellow Wenxiu Teng and affiliated investigator Brian Yellen has revealed, however, that suspended sediment in coastal waters around the globe has declined significantly over the past four decades. To reach this conclusion, Teng developed a new technique for measuring sediment concentrations by using Landsat imagery to interpret light reflected from the water column. This analysis is driven by an algorithm that Teng developed at UMass Amherst, where he is a doctoral student. Relying on this algorithm, Teng and Yellen developed the Global Coastal Sediments Viewer, a high-resolution mapping tool capable of visualizing coastal sediments across the globe.

Teng recently shared preliminary findings based on this research at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Read the full article about Teng and Yellen’s work in Eos.