JLab Studying global change, one organism at a time

We are fertilizing the world's oceans. Fertilizer run-off, particularly nitrogen, from agriculture and sewage discharge are adding nutrients to our marine ecosystems. These nutrients can cause harmful algal blooms, rob the water of oxygen (hypoxia), and lead to loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function. Salt marshes - which lie between the land and the sea - are thought to be buffers that can protect the ocean from terrestrial fertilizers. But this idea has not been rigorously tested. Nor do we know the long-term consequences of enriching our salt marshes with nitrogen fertilizers. 

The TIDE Project is an ecosystem-level experiment in which we add nutrients (nitrogen) to hectares of salt marsh. TIDE began in 2004 and continues today. It is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary project examining everything from bacteria to birds to biogeochemistry and geomorphology. We use the TIDE Project to examine top-down (consumer) and bottom-up (resource) control on food-webs, predator-prey interactions, parasite-host dynamics, and energy flow.