Selected Research Projects on the Hudson

1. Climatic and anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems of the Hudson Estuary: paleoecological perspective (Funded by Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve and New York Sea Grant Cooperative Graduate fellowship)

2. Paleoenvironmental proxy development: Coupled palynology, radiometric, and XRF elemental analysis for rapid analysis of environmental change in organic-rich wetland sediments. (Funded by National Estuarine Research Reserve Graduate fellowship & LDEO climate center)

3. Estuarine-wide study of carbon, sediment, and toxic metal dynamics in Hudson marshes (Funded by National Estuarine Research Reserve Graduate fellowship)

Study Sites

The Hudson River Estuary is typical of a large, intensively used and modified estuary. Its watershed is an important resource for millions of people in small communities along the river as well as large population centers such as the Metropolitan area of New York City. In addition to past industrial activities within the region that have resulted in many instances of environmental contamination, the estuary is at high risk for climatic and other anthropogenic changes. It is important to understand how the ecosystem and the environment will behave in these future changes and how we might be able to minimize the adverse impacts.

We examined 33 marsh and near-shore sediment cores and 15 surface samples to identify estuarine-wide ecosystem dynamics, sediment dynamics, historic landscape changes, and the fate of metal contaminants over 100-1000 years. The sites include four Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserves (Tivoli Bays, Stockport Flats, Iona Island, and Piermont Marsh) plus additional old marshes (i.e. Manitou, Jamaica Bay, and Statement Island), urban sites (i.e. Jamaica Bay, Staten Island, and the East River), new marshes, and deltas of tributaries as shown below.

Study sites and salinity ranges Precious sediment extracted from Jamaica Bay, ready for analysis.	A peek into the Constitution Marsh, Cold Spring, NY. Tivoli North Bay
Crew hard at work: sediment coring at Jamaica Bay using a Dashnawski corer	Our high school intern, Max, having fun sinking in the marsh.
Iona Island Marsh	Our past undergrad intern, Cecelia Baum, disappearing into massive Phragmites australis, an invasive species, at Piermont Marsh.