Funding helps track climate change impact on coastal wetlands

Friday morning, March 17, the last day of spring break 2017 for University of Rhode Island, Danielle Perry scrolled through the emails downloading into her phone.

One message came from the National Science Foundation — a notification that the doctoral student had earned a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF).

“I’m still in a little bit of shock,” recalls Perry, days later, sitting in her first floor office in the Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences (CBLS). “I was getting prepared for teaching Monday and I looked at my phone. All of my emails flushed in and I saw it. I thought, oh my goodness!”

She says she first applied for the fellowship in 2015, but didn’t receive an award. She applied again last October and then turned her attention elsewhere: “Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about it. It’s so competitive, the announcement just wasn’t on my radar. I had to read the email a couple times.”

The NSF received more than 13,000 applications for the 2017 round and awarded 2,000, three-year fellowships that carry an annual stipend of $34,000 plus $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees. The fellows also gain opportunities for international research and professional development.

“Danielle is a fearless and very promising environmental scientist who is very deserving of the NSF GRF. In her first two years here at URI, she has quickly and easily transitioned her studies of algae and salt marshes from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Now she is going global.”

Perry says she first thanked God and then called her mother with the good news. She then went to see her advisor, Interim Dean of Research Carol Thornber, College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS). The NSF support will allow Perry to finish her degree with the freedom to pursue her research, which falls into three main projects for her dissertation — Effects of Macroalgal Accumulation and Restoration Initiatives on Salt Marsh Environments.

Thornber says Perry’s work holds significance both from a scientific and public perspective, particularly in the Northeast, where the impacts of climate change are altering the coastal landscape. The question is whether salt marshes can keep up with rising sea levels and continue to act as a buffer or whether they will get flooded out and fail to serve a mitigating role.

“Protecting our coastlines is critically important in terms of state economic development,” says Thornber. “Danielle is helping to expand our knowledge base and advance the best science while developing into one of our next scientific leaders.”

Perry completed the work for her first chapter last summer, introducing algae, an environmental stressor, to the salt marsh environment to gauge the impact on greenhouse gas fluxes. In particular, she looked at cordgrass, one of the main salt marsh plants in New England, and exposed it to different algae treatments, using Ulva and Fucus species. She compared the effects and measured the grass survival rate.

Graduate fellowship funding from Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR allowed the New Jersey native to stay and work in the Ocean State during her prime, summer research season. As part of the Thornber lab and in collaboration with CELS Assistant Professor Serena Moseman-Valtierra, Perry also oversaw RI EPSCoR Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURFs) selected for a 10-week opportunity to conduct hands-on research.

“My main concern when I came to URI was funding,” Perry says, putting the importance of graduate funding into context. “My research is done in the summer, and teaching assistantships are difficult to obtain during that time. That’s why Rhode Island EPSCoR is so great. The summer support allowed me to stay in the area and do my research. With the GRFP, I will no longer have to worry about sumer funding. It’s a big relief.”

Carbon sinks to sources

Studying the influences of algae on cordgrass survival and greenhouse gas fluxes brings greater understanding to the impact of climate change on coastal wetlands. The grasses play a vital role by absorbing carbon dioxide, sequestering the greenhouse gas, and helping salt marshes serve as carbon sinks.

However, Perry says, last summer’s research found that the soil cores covered by algae, an anticipated consequence of sea level rise and inundation of salt marshes, contributed to the emission of more carbon dioxide and methane: “The grasses are supposed to absorb the carbon dioxide, but instead they are releasing carbon. As salt marshes degrade on a global scale, they are becoming carbon sources. Plants are dying and land is eroding, so marshes are not as healthy and they are unable to take up as much carbon.”

Sea level rise and wave action are drowning and eroding coastal wetlands, says Perry. Summertime algae blooms wash into the salt marshes with the tides. The algae accumulates and decreases the stem density of the grasses, which can contribute to marsh degradation and potentially lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our marshes are drowning,” Perry explains. “They can’t stand the increased inundation of seawater due to sea level rise.”

Perry’s second and third chapters take on a restorative focus and look to salt marsh conservation and ways to ease environmental stressors.

For one project, she is working with Moseman-Valtierra and Save the Bay, which is digging channels into the marsh to alleviate flooding water and divert it back to Narragansett Bay. Perry and Moseman-Valtierra will measure the greenhouse gases in restored areas as the water retreats to determine whether carbon and methane fluxes change in comparison to areas still inundated with water.

The work also involves adding dredged sediment to the salt marsh surface — at Middlebridge salt marsh areas in Narragansett —  to combat sea level rise. Gas flux measurements can tell the scientists whether one method of restoration, digging channels or thin layer deposition, is more effective than the other.

For her third chapter, Perry will travel to China through another NSF fellowship, the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes, to work with a contact of Moseman-Valtierra’s, to study another salt marsh restoration project using thin layer deposition and fertilizer to promote salt marsh plant growth and to measure greenhouse gas fluxes.

“I realize that I have a responsibility to be an advocate and encourage others by being an example. You can be a minority and be in the environmental science field.”

Developing diversity

As a woman and a woman of color, Perry says she readily recognizes she is a minority in her field, and wants to be a positive example to other minorities who wish to pursue environmental science.

“When I was growing up, our neighborhood wasn’t diverse, so I am familiar with being a minority within a group,” she recalls of her upbringing in Hazlet, N.J. “Then, I got to college, and I was the only person of color in my major. But, I’ve always had the mindset that I can achieve anything I set my mind to, which pushed me to follow through with marine biology.”

Perry  earned dual degrees in Marine Biology and Environmental Science, along with a minor in Sustainability Studies, at the University of New Haven. She attributes her attitude and drive to the support of her parents, both computer analysts who came to the U.S. from Jamaica, West Indies, and raised her in an academic environment where education was highly valued.

As an undergraduate, Perry served as a resident assistant and president of the marine biology club. She also sought out research experiences each summer. She highlighted an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) opportunity in Monterey Bay, Calif., with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, as the pivotal moment where she realized the path she wanted to pursue.

“The REU,” she says, “really solidified the fact that I wanted to be a marine researcher. That internship is why I’m here.”  

The fall of 2014, during her senior year, Perry attended the annual conference for the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), where she met one of Moseman-Valtierra’s graduate students, who told her about Thornber and the work in her lab. Perry graduated the following spring and started at URI in the fall of 2015.

She says she fully understands that as a woman of color, she can use her position to make an impact and encourage other minority students to enter STEM fields.

“I realize that I have a responsibility to be an advocate and encourage others by being an example,” Perry says. “You can be a minority and be in the environmental science field.”

In turn, Perry looks to her mentors for showing her what is possible: “Carol and Serena have been very supportive. And, they are very successful in their careers, so it sets the example that, yes, I can do this, too.”

Moseman-Valtierra offers high praise for Perry.

“Danielle is a fearless and very promising environmental scientist who is very deserving of the NSF GRF,” she says. “In her first two years here at URI, she has quickly and easily transitioned her studies of algae and salt marshes from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Now she is going global.”

Moseman-Valtierra adds that she was pleased to facilitate the international collaboration that Perry initiated with her colleagues in China. Perry also independently wrote a successful proposal to NSF to fund her travel abroad.

“She has impressively done this while weekly volunteering with Save the Bay, teaching algal ecology to URI students, and mentoring first generation students in our college via Seeds of Success,” says Moseman-Valtierra. “This critical funding will give her much needed freedom for her further studies and I know that — in her hands — it will broadly benefit environmental science on multiple levels.”

Story and photos by Amy Dunkle