University of New Orleans professor Maddie Foster-Martinez is the recipient of a two-year $345,000 grant from the RESTORE Act Center of Excellence - The Water Institute. Through funding from fines and penalties in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, these grants fund research that directly supports planning and implementation of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan. Foster-Martinez’s research will focus on determining vegetation establishment with custom-built sensors.

Foster-Martinez is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and is a member of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. Her research focuses on coastal wetlands and leveraging vegetation for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Two of the main strategies to reverse land loss in coastal Louisiana are river diversions and pumping sediment to create marshes in shallow water, according to Foster-Martinez. For both strategies, the presence of marsh plants is critical in how much land is built and how long it lasts, she said.

“For both types, we don't know exactly what conditions make it possible for marsh plants to first start growing, but if we could figure that out, then our models to predict land building over time could be much more accurate,” Foster-Martinez said. “And we could do a better job of creating the right conditions for marsh plants to first establish.”

Foster-Martinez and her research team will make detailed measurements at three sites across Louisiana, two in natural deltas and one in a marsh creation. They will use customized sensors at each location to determine how much vegetation is being established.

“We know that a big increase in water level is occurring globally and will amplify within our lifetimes, in addition to more hurricane activity,” Foster-Martinez said. “It's important to understand how our coastal marshes function, so we can make informed decisions with accurate modeling. Our current models are quite good, but we can always do better. This project pushes us in that direction.”

The Water Institute was selected by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) to serve as the state’s Center of Excellence. In this role, the institute administers a competitive grants program, in collaboration with CPRA, to support research that can help answer questions and provide guidance in the state’s $50 billion, 50-year Coastal Master Plan.

To select the projects, the Center of Excellence coordinated an external peer-review process where three independent subject matter experts, including Center of Excellence External Review Board members, evaluated each proposal. Representatives from CPRA also evaluated the proposals to help determine how well each proposal applied to advancing the Coastal Master Plan work.