Most people’s experience with seagrass, if any, amounts to little more than a tickle on their ankles while wading in shallow coastal waters.
Most people’s experience with seagrass, if any, amounts to little more than a tickle on their ankles while wading in shallow coastal waters. But it turns out these ubiquitous plants, varieties of which exist around the world, could play a key role in protecting vulnerable shores as they face onslaughts from rising sea levels.
New research for the first time quantifies, through experiments and mathematical modelling, just how large and how dense a continuous meadow of seagrass must be to provide adequate damping of waves in a given geographic, climatic, and oceanographic setting.
In a pair of papers appearing in the May issues of two research journals, Coastal Engineeringand the Journal of Fluids and Structures, MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Heidi Nepf and doctoral student Jiarui Lei describe their findings and the significant environmental benefits seagrass offers. These include not only preventing beach erosion and protecting seawalls and other structures, but also improving water quality and sequestering carbon to help limit future climate change.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Seagrass could play a key role in protecting vulnerable shores as they face onslaughts from rising sea levels. Courtesy of the researchers
