Restoring seagrass meadows (Zostera marina) that have been lost to coastal infrastructure development, logging, and pollution is a pillar of the Canadian strategy for greenhouse gas reduction and protecting biodiversity. While seagrass restoration through transplantation has long been practiced, lack of inclusion of sediments and microbiota often results in failure. Together with local partners (BC Parks, Tla’amin and Huu-ay-aht Nations, restoration practitioners, and others), this project team will test the role of microbes and microbial processes in seagrass restoration success and develop a database of restoration projects. The goal of the “Testing the influence of microbes and sediment chemistry on seagrass restoration” project is to increase the success rates of seagrass restoration throughout BC and the northern hemisphere by revising practices to incorporate microbial processes.
Objectives
We propose testing the role of microbes and microbial processes in eelgrass restoration success using a combination of manipulative experiments that seed transplants with native eelgrass sediment microbes (from nearby locations to avoid introducing novel organisms), microbial community profiling, and measurement of sediment properties. In collaboration with local partners (BC Parks, Tla’amin Nation, and others), we aim to address three primary objectives:
- Objective 1: Conduct a comparative assessment of the impact of habitat degradation and seagrass loss on sediments and microbial communities. For this objective, we will leverage this existing partnership and knowledge of seagrass decline in the region to test the hypothesis that boat traffic and anchorage degrade habitat by increasing deposition of labile organic carbon (LOC) and thus causing increasingly anoxic and sulfidic conditions that prevent natural seagrass recovery.
- Objective 2: A new resource for restoration in BC: A compilation of restoration projects including locations, success rates, methods and site characteristics of restoration efforts in the last 20–30 years. Here, we will collaborate with local restoration practitioners to compile data on local projects (date, location, success, pertinent site characteristics, etc) and produce a spatial database of projects and their success. We will then sample sediment and microbiota at sites designated as restored or restoration failed to determine if they differ in their sediment chemistry and soil microbiota.
- Objective 3: Test possible interventions to improve restoration success. For this objective, chemistry manipulation treatments will be used to compare seagrass growth in sediments which were oxygenated and became sulfidic, and vice versa. The results of these trials will inform our understanding of transplant methods that increase success rates of seagrass restoration into sulfidic and high LOC environments.
Altogether, this work will potentially increase the success rates of eelgrass restoration throughout coastal BC and throughout the northern hemisphere by revising practices to incorporate microbial processes.
Research Team
Partners
Funding Partners: Peter Wall Legacy Awards