Bay to bayou: URI co-leads $4 million NSF grant to advance wetland restoration in Rhode Island and Louisiana

September 2, 2026
Students in Ying Zhang’s lab conduct field sampling at Succotash Marsh in South Kingstown this summer, part of the groundwork assessing biomarkers in marsh monitoring. (URI Photo / Y. Zhang)

September 1, 2026

The University of Rhode Island recently received a $4 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to co-lead a collaboration with Louisiana State University to improve coastal wetland management in both states. Ying Zhang, professor of cell and molecular biology at URI, is the lead principal investigator (PI) on the project, while Erin Peck (URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography), Julia Wyman (School of Law at Roger Williams University and Rhode Island Sea Grant Legal Program), Hui Zhou (URI’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics), and Kenneth Raposa (RI Department of Environmental Management) are co-PIs.

The Ecological-Economic Collaboratory for Advancing coastal wetland REstoration and REsilience (EcoCARE) project addresses the need for expanded research on coastal wetland restoration in both regions. A team of scientists, practitioners, policy experts, and stakeholders from Rhode Island and Louisiana will develop innovative methods in AI-enhanced modeling, wetland valuation, molecular biomonitoring, and restoration financing.

URI is co-leading a project to advance wetland resilience across coastal systems with colleagues in Rhode Island and beyond (left to right): GSO’s Kris Lewis, GSO’s Erin Peck, RIDEM’s Kenneth Raposa, URI Coastal Institute’s Jaclyn Witterschein, URI CELS Ying Zhang, URI ICELSHui Zhou, URI CELS Emi Uchida, and Roger Williams University’s Julia Wyman. (Not shown, Michael Pürrer). (URI Photo / Anna Gray)

A computational biologist, Zhang, of South Kingstown, brings to the project a background that includes computer science and expertise in microbial diversity and molecular ecology. Although she has led previous NSF grant-funded initiatives, including a CAREER award and an EPSCoR fellowship, she is now leading the multi-institutional EPSCoR project for the first time under the Focused Collaborations Program. She has been meeting with the team since last fall and is looking forward to the work getting underway.

“I am excited as a scientist and a resident of Rhode Island to contribute to the health and resilience of our coastal wetlands,” she said. “This research could set important precedents for coastal wetland socio-ecological systems. As the ‘Ocean State,’ around 90% of Rhode Island’s residents live within a 20-minute drive of the shoreline. Coastal wetlands play a significant role in flood protection, habitat maintenance, and recreational services. This project will provide new tools for us to better assess their value and provide new insights to help support the protection and restoration of coastal wetlands.”

The Rhode Island-based team will also collaborate with Xiaochen Zhao and George Xue at LSU as their work will tie together research currently happening miles apart in different settings. Their expanded team will develop novel biomarkers for environmental monitoring and work closely with coastal modeling experts, economists, and AI scientists to inform coastal wetland management in both states.

The project represents the first transdisciplinary team that seeks the convergence of molecular biomonitoring, AI-enhanced geophysical modeling, and experimental economics under a single integrated research framework.

Coastal management by region

Zhang and her colleagues in Baton Rouge have already noticed some differences in how Rhode Island and Louisiana approach coastal management.

Louisiana’s river-dominated coast has the highest wetland loss rate in the country; a new project seeks to discover how wetland resilience in the Pelican State compares with Rhode Island

“Louisiana takes a top-down strategy to support statewide networks in wetland monitoring and priority assessment,” Zhang said, “while Rhode Island takes a bottom-up approach with active initiation from regional reserves, nonprofit organizations, and municipalities. We are interested in understanding how these two strategies may influence the preparedness of coastal states in data collection, strengthening research, and promoting community engagement and translational science.”

In Rhode Island, Zhang will also work with URI alum Kenneth Raposa ’93 ’97 ’00 at Rhode Island DEM. Raposa is the research coordinator for the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NBNERR) and brings more than two decades of field experience to the project. Prior to his tenure at RI DEM, Raposa received a Ph.D. from URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, where his research focused on the effects of salt marsh hydrologic restoration projects. He will contribute wetland data collection, field monitoring, and vegetation assessment.

The EcoCARE team will ultimately share their results in a public web portal that will determine drivers and metrics for wetland management across both states.

The grant will also incorporate research and career development opportunities for students, postdocs, and early-career faculty, hands-on training for the wider community, and workshops for trainees from colleges and universities in both Rhode Island and Louisiana.