Project Video Title: Assessing Salt Marshes
in South Carolina\
voice of Adriana Le Compte
>> South Carolina is home to half a million
acres of salt marsh, a productive ecosystem
that absorbs storm surges and prevents coastal
erosion.
voice of Elspeth Gates
>> Salt marshes provide crucial ecosystem
services including water filtration, shoreline
protection, storm surge buffering, carbon
sequestration, and flood mitigation.
>> A way to quantify marsh health is the Unvegetated
to Vegetated Ratio or UVVR. UVVR uses vegetative
cover collected from satellite images to understand
if marshes have a sufficient sediment balance
to maintain their structure against storm
surge and sea level rise.
voice of Adriana Le Compte
>> The NASA DEVELOP South Carolina Water Resources
team at Langley partnered with the South Carolina
Department of Natural Resources, The USGS
Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center,
and the South Carolina Department of Health
and Environmental Control to calculate changes
in marsh vulnerability using UVVR.
