In 1969, John and Mildred Teal published Life and Death of the Salt Marsh, a landmark book about the fragile ecosystems created 10,000 years ago during the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. 

Fifty-seven years later, some of the field’s top scientists say the book remains a vital text for researchers and everyday Islanders alike as salt marshes stare down mounting pressures from climate change.

A panel of scientists celebrated the book’s re-release at a talk at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on April 15, and highlighted the threats that salt marshes face. 

“I do want to say that important functions of salt marshes are still being discovered,” said Susan Teal, an anthropologist  and the second wife of John Teal, who has conducted extensive research focused on ecological engineering, innovative wastewater designs, and understanding commercial fisheries.

Event panel highlighted the plight of marshes. — Ray Ewing

Life and Death of the Salt Marsh is a comprehensive study of the coastal ecosystems that tells a tale of an interconnected border land, one intrinsically intertwined and birthed from the chaotic molding of land, sea, and air by glacial migration.

Salt marshes are coastal tidal areas that exist in constant flux. Because of this, the ecosystems living within these coastal areas are extremely fragile and can experience profound changes in their ability to store carbon and cultivate marine fisheries that are important to New England. 

According to Susan Teal, John loved to tinker and became interested in the freshwater ecosystems in his backyard in Omaha, Nebraska. Years later, as both an undergraduate and graduate student at Harvard University, John spent time during the summers circumnavigating the scientific community around Woods Hole. Soon after completing his studies, he worked alongside his first wife, Mildred, studying coastal ecosystems located throughout the eastern seaboard.

One of his goals was to make the plight of salt marshes understandable to non-scientists.

“[John] was an expert about the effect of oil pollution on the oceans, in part because of oil pollution events that happened here in Buzzards Bay,” said Ms. Teal. “Despite the fact that he was committed as a technical scientist and published a lot of technical articles, his real interest was in communicating to the general public.”

Neil Ganju, a research oceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center and another member of the event panel, said that scientists are now studying how quickly marshes are migrating and how quickly storms and sea level rise are impacting them.

Mr. Ganju noted the implementation of satellite data, aerial photography, and sensors implanted into the marshes themselves to inform the practices of conservation to preserve the ecosystem services.

“That’s the work that this book laid the foundation for, and the work that the coalition is continuing,” said Mr. Ganju.

The panel, which also included Christopher Neill with the Woodwell Climate Research Center and Marlissa Briggett with the Buzzards Bay Coalition, agreed that sea level rise is one of the main factors affecting salt marshes. Between 2020 and 2022, levels rose by one foot due to huge fluctuations in the global atmosphere. Such a sharp rise in sea levels can over flood coastal wetlands and destroy vegetation in salt marshes. 

“The marshes have this cycle of flooding and draining, but when that’s interrupted by sea level, it’s rising faster than the marsh can build its own roots and accumulate sediment to keep up with,” said Mr. Neill. “It starts this vicious, bad feedback of plants not growing and then growing less and accumulating less and eventually sinking and becoming open water.”

Martha’s Vineyard has several marshes but isn’t home to the same large swaths found on Cape Cod and much of the eastern United States. However, the deterioration of these coastal wetlands can have catastrophic effects on birds that rely on wetland areas to feed as they travel up and down the coastline during seasonal migrations.

“What we are losing are those services, and we’re losing them because of natural changes,” said Mr. Ganju. “So sea level rise has been happening. It happens in these cycles, right? We all know about that being in the glacial landscape, but sea level rise has accelerated at a pace that doesn’t allow us to keep up with the changes that are naturally happening.”

The species living at this threshold survive on thin margins, often at the whims of a delicate chemical balance. Even small changes in water levels, temperatures, or nutrients (specifically sulfide and nitrogen build up), can have catastrophic effects. The panel suggested that the timeframe of changes seem to be happening in lengths of decades instead of centuries. 

According to Mr. Neill, the goal is to continue to raise money through philanthropic endeavors to build conservational areas behind these salt marshes to maintain the threatened ecosystems.

“Another very interesting feature of that adaptation is, right now, there’s a big opportunity in Massachusetts to buy cranberry bogs that are not going to be there in 10 years, not economical, or the farmers are aging, and some of those are right at the head of tide, and those are already flat,” said Mr. Neill.

Cranberry bogs are already preconditioned as places where marshes will migrate as sea levels rise. These purchasing projects illustrate how the Buzzards Bay Coalition can develop relationships with farmers to maintain coastal wetlands of the future, said Mr. Neill.

Researchers have also begun gathering cores taken from salt marsh sediment to look at the effect of microplastics on the environment. 

Marshlands are noted for their resilience. They are ephemeral and designed to migrate. They will often lose some of their established area to the land and are prone to the effects of severe storms, which can accelerate these changes overnight. With time, they will naturally re-establish themselves in different areas as new inlets and coves are formed. 

But, the nature of man to develop the surrounding environment using dredges and filling tools will ultimately determine the future of coastal wetlands, write John and Mildred Teal.

“And quite soon,” they concluded.