ORONO, Maine — The Federal Emergency Management Agency is monitoring infrastructure repair efforts around Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Superstorm Sandy killed 73 people and caused billions of dollars in damage when it barreled ashore a little more than two years ago.
In January, Brian Olsen, assistant professor of biology and ecology, will start gauging the restoration of tidal marshes and birds along the same stretch of coastline impacted by the most deadly and destructive storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — which works with other agencies to conserve migratory birds for the public good — awarded Olsen a $1.4 million grant to conduct a 22-month study on the recovery of birds associated with tidal marshes from Virginia to Maine.
The area is home to 56 percent of the world’s salt marsh specialist vertebrates, including a number of at-risk migratory birds, he says.
“A thorough understanding of Hurricane Sandy’s effects on tidal marsh wildlife is needed to help direct remediation funds where they will have the greatest impact,” Olsen wrote in the project overview.
For the study, he’ll utilize four years of data — the two immediately prior to Hurricane Sandy and the two immediately following it. The data, he says, will provide an unprecedented opportunity to document the superstorm’s short-term impacts on tidal marshes — including reproduction and survival rates of threatened species.
“By noting which marshes within the storm’s path were most impacted, we will be able to identify what makes a marsh resilient to change,” says Olsen. “We hope that information will help us to increase the resiliency of the region’s marshes to future challenges.”
The data also will inform long-term impact projections of future storms on the resilience of willets, clapper rails, Nelson’s sparrows, seaside sparrows and saltmarsh sparrows. Olsen and his colleagues will integrate the estimates into population viability analyses to benefit conservation planning and restoration efforts.
The universities of Delaware, Connecticut and New Hampshire are participating, as is the State University of New York, Syracuse.