Dear Deal Island Peninsula Partners,

Happy New Year! We hope the new decade is off to an excellent start. Below you will find the latest information we have available on the various DIPP projects and activities that are underway, plus links to a new DIPP publication, some new website resources, and information about an upcoming volunteer opportunity. We unfortunately have little progress to share with you at this time on permit approvals for the pending Deal Island shoreline project and Hodson White ditch work, but will continue to keep you updated as we receive new information from our State and County stakeholders. We have, however, made some forward progress on developing DIPP's strategic planning discussions. More details on this can be found below.

In other news, I will be taking three months of maternity leave from DIPP at the beginning of February. While a very exciting new chapter for me personally, it also means that we must put the DIPP newsletters on a temporary hold due to staffing limitations. Thanks to Michael Paolisso though, we will be able to continue to share a limited number of email updates on the Deal Island Shoreline Project and Hodson White ditch maintenance work with those who are interested. If you would like to be kept informed of progress on one or both of these projects, please send me an email (dealislandpeninsulaproject@gmail.com) by January 24th, and indicate which of these two project(s) you'd like receive updates about.

Thanks, as always, for your continued interest in DIPP. We're looking forward to an exciting 2020 ahead!

Sincerely,
Liz Van Dolah

DIPP Coordinator

Updates on Ongoing Projects

Deal Island Shoreline Project: No new updates are available on pending permits for the Deal Island Shoreline Project. We will keep you informed as new information becomes available. 

Open Ditch Drainage System Assessment: Somerset County is waiting to receive the finalized report from AMT Engineers on the Dames Quarter and Oriole ditch drainage assessment conducted in 2019. Once they receive the report, County staff will discuss next steps for possible drainage improvements. 

DIPP Strategic Planning: Follow last month's discussions about DIPP's leadership needs, Liz Van Dolah and Michael Paolisso drafted a proposed framework to begin formalizing a DIPP coordination committee and organizational structure. The proposed framework is a necessary first step for developing DIPP's sustainability and formulating a strategic plan for DIPP that achieves a range of stakeholder needs and goals. Michael will be working with a small group of individuals representing DIPP's stakeholder groups to provide some initial feedback on the framework. We will reach out to additional stakeholders for their input and participation in the near future.  

Notes from the Marsh: New Findings from the Deal Island Marsh and Community Project

During DIPP's first collaborative initiative, the Deal Island Marsh and Community Project (DIMCP), DIPP stakeholders from the University of Maryland and DNR/CBNERR conducted several research projects on local marshes. These projects were carried out to understand how plugging ditches in the marshes -- as a means to restore their natural hydrological dynamics -- affects different dimensions of the marsh's resilience to environmental change. One question they explored was how ditch plugging impacts marsh vegetation, a summary of which is now available on the website and can be found below. Visit the DIMCP webpage to learn how other environmental factors, such as mosquito populations, methane emissions, and soil retainment may be affected by ditch plugging and their implications for the health of Deal Island's marshes and communities. 

Wetland plants play a number of vital roles in wetland ecosystems, providing food for habitat, improving water quality, and influencing the flow of water as they lessen the impact of flood events, stabilize shorelines, and regulate the water cycle. The tidal marshes of the Deal Island Peninsula are home to a variety of plants. These specialized plants each have adaptations, ecological tolerances, and life history strategies. 

Plants are often used as indicators of wetland health since plant growth is easy to measure and growth occurs in direct response to environmental conditions. In coastal wetlands, two of the most important environmental variables are hydrology (water level over time) and the salinity. Incoming tides bring in nourishing sediments and nutrients, but too much flooding can cause wetland plants to die back. Similarly, the salinity of water in marshes affects how well species can grow, so if salinity changes so can the species that live there and the services they provide. Most of the Deal Island Peninsula's marshes have been ditched in an effort to control mosquito populations. Ditching the marshes changed the natural hydrologic and probably salinity regimes, and may have altered plant community composition and in turn the services they provide. Efforts to restore the pre-ditching hydrology by plugging ditches may or may not be successful because the ecosystem may have changed over the many years they were ditched. 

Vegetation studies were conducted to understand general marsh vegetation conditions and the effects of plugging of ditches on marsh plants. Vegetation studies were conducted at three pairs of ditched and unditched marshes (two pairs on the Deal Island Peninsula and one pair at EA Vaughan). We inventoried vegetation species, estimated the amount of visual cover, measured height, and measured the amount of ditches at the three ditch-drained marsh sites in an attempt to restore a pre-ditching hydrological regime. We compared ditches and unditched sites for each location. We expected to see a shift in the plant composition to species that were more flood-tolerant, under the assumption that ditches were draining the wetlands. We also anticipated that there would be changes in above ground and below ground biomass.  

Our results were mixed. We observed no clear relationship between plant covers or diversity and ditch status (before and after ditch plug installation). On the Deal Island ditched site, above ground biomass decreased after plugging; however we also saw a decrease at the paired unditched site, indicating that the decrease was due to natural variation rather than plugging. At EA Vaughn, above ground biomass decreased after the plug was installed at the ditch site, but increased at the paired unditched site, again making it difficult to associate cause and effect in before and after comparisons. Root production did respond to the change in hydrology; however, the response varied by root fraction (e.g. rhizome vs. course roots) and site. Total below ground production decreased at sites after plugging, but it also decreased at the unditched sites, meaning that the decrease may have ben due to the ditching. Coarse root and rhizomes increased after plugging, but again the increased occurred at both the ditched and unditched sites. 

Our control site, Monie Bay, saw no major shifts over time. There are several reasons that might explain the lack of a clear response to plugging. First, it may be that the ditch plugging had little effect on hydrology. Second, while the vegetation found at our sites are sensitive to water levels, water levels remained in the tolerance range for most of the species found and insufficient time had gone by for there to be detectable changes attributable to the plugging. Third, disturbances at the site may have introduced variability greater than that caused by ditch plugging. For example, there was a high storm tide at one site that deposited wrack and disturbed negation, complicating the interpretation of results. In light of these explanations, it is possible to say that there was not a stronger, short-term effect of ditching that eclipsed the patterns not natural to spatial and temporal variability in these marshes.

Visit the DIMCP Vegetation Study page to learn more. 

Other News, Resources, and Opportunties 

New DIPP Publication: "Faith Communities for Coastal Resilience: Lessons from Collaborative Learning on the Chesapeake Bay

Christy Miller Hesed, Liz Van Dolah, and Michael Paolisso published a paper on findings from DIPP's Engaging Faith Communities for Coastal Resilience Project (abstract available here). If you would like to read the full publication, please get in touch with Christy (cmillerh@umd.edu). 

New Photo Archive of Deal Island Communities and Culture: These photos were captured by UMD student and photographer Julia Keane in 2016 during the Integrated Coastal Resiliency Assessment activities. We hope they provide another useful resources for documenting life on the Peninsula and social and cultural aspects of local resilience. Access the photo collection on our resource tab or by visiting the community section of our resource page.