Research fellow: Emma Nassaney
Hometown: Lincoln, RI
School: Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL
Major: Marine Science, biology focus

Rising senior Emma Nassaney attends college on the Gulf Coast of Florida, but she returned home to the Ocean State this summer to take advantage of an exciting research opportunity with Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR.

As a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF), Nassaney gains full-time, hands-on experience in her field of study, earns a $4,500 stipend plus up to $500 in research supplies, and helps advance an important body of science.

Nassaney, working with University of Rhode Island master’s student Katelyn Szura in the lab of CELS Associate Professor Serena Moseman-Valtierra, headed into a salt marsh and set up one meter quadrats as part of the preparation work for her SURF project. She counted the number of crabs and plants, and measured plant height in each square, and used equipment to measure carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide levels. Flags staking out the quadrats will allow her to return in the following weeks to monitor the numbers and growth.

“There are a lot of papers that talk about how fiddler crabs help marshes grow, but the purple marsh crabs, which are elusive and a lot larger, degrade the marsh when they eat the plants,” Nassaney says.

She theorizes that a higher presence of crabs, brought on in part by fishing, which reduces fish as a predator, leads to more plant degradation and less carbon uptake by the salt marsh. Although she has conducted research projects for school and helped out in faculty labs, Nassaney says the SURF experience is her first exposure to full-time research on an open-ended project.

Ultimately, the Moseman-Valtierra work aims to provide information that can help inform policy and management decisions to protect coastal wetlands. Coastal wetlands are an invaluable resource, particularly in Rhode Island, where salt marshes face threats from sea level rise wrought by climate change along with localized issues such as excess nitrogen loading and the increasing crab populations.

Bringing a greater understanding to how these dynamics interact will help lead to better salt marsh protection and restoration. Nassaney’s summer research contributes to a larger collaboration of Moseman-Valtierra’s — Bringing Wetlands to Market — which aims to explore the feasibility of creating a carbon trading market to provide economic incentive to protect and restore coastal wetlands.

“This is definitely different,” Nassaney says of her SURF experience. “It’s a lot more hands on and more out in the field. It also offers a lot more independence that you don’t get in the classroom setting — here, you’re out on your own and accountable. I’m learning a lot.”

Nassaney says she found out about SURF through a list of National Science Foundation (NSF) undergraduate research opportunities. RI EPSCoR SURF offered the perfect option as a paid fellowship in her home state.

“I also was really interested in learning more about the Rhode Island environment since I don’t go to school here,” she says. “This is definitely helping me, and my interests have evolved into learning more about how ecology and the ecosystem function as a whole. It’s interesting to get the whole, big picture approach.”

As her graduation date grows closer, Nassaney says graduate school has been more on her mind, although, she remains unsure if she will decide to go straight from college or if she will take a year off for either volunteer work or an assistantship.

Story and photos by Amy Dunkle