Help Protect Washington There are many ways to give to The Nature Conservancy. We rely on your support to accomplish our ambitious conservation goals. Salmon Country Watch a showcase of videos featuring Conservancy work from Alaska to California to revive threatened salmon. Dive In Places We Protect Learn more about Port Susan Bay, where we're studying sea-level rise. Migratory Birds Click here to learn more about the migratory shorebirds that depend on Port Susan Bay. Climate Change The Nature Conservancy is developing strategies to fight climate change. Learn what we're doing, and what you can do to help. Read a related article from the Fall/Winter 08 Washington Wildlands magazine. Click here (.pdf file). Meet Conservancy Staff Roger Fuller is an estuarine ecologist. He works at The Nature Conservancy's Port Susan Bay preserve.

Port Susan Bay holds some of the finest estuarine habitat in Puget Sound. The Stillaguamish River spills into the bay, mixing freshwater and saltwater to create extensive estuarine marshes.

The marshes support abundant invertebrate life which, in turn, feed hundreds of thousands of shorebirds, including dunlins, western sandpipers, and Wrangel Island snow geese. Port Susan Bay and adjacent Skagit Bay are important stops for migratory birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway.

Port Susan Bay also faces challenges. Levees along the Stillaguamish River have disconnected it from floodplain wetlands which used to moderate river flows to the estuary by storing winter rainwater and releasing it slowly over the course of the year.

A sea dike, built in the 1950s to create more farmland, directs much of the river and its sediment load away from the historic estuary, leading to erosion of the tidal marsh. And now, our changing global climate brings new threats to the estuary.

Roger Fuller, an estuarine ecologist for the Conservancy, talks about using Port Susan Bay as a laboratory for studying climate change.

Q&A with Roger Fuller
 

Nature.org: Why did you decide to study climate change at Port Susan Bay?

Roger Fuller: After the Conservancy bought the preserve, we did a general habitat survey and map, and looked at historical photos to see how the estuary is changing.

It has become clear that it’s not static, and it appears to be declining in productivity and value for most of the animal and plant species that thrive there. For example, the tidal marsh zone, which is sort of like the "bread basket" for the whole estuary ecosystem, has been gradually disappearing.

Nature.org: Any ideas why?

Roger Fuller: Well, of course we humans have had the biggest impact by converting natural habitat to other land uses and changing some of the key processes that feed the estuary.

But, one of the factors we knew was out there was climate change. That’s also what we had the least information and knowledge about. That led us to develop a project to evaluate how climate change is affecting the estuary.

A lot of the big questions have to do with the interplay of climate change effects—how does sea-level rise interact with changes in river flow; how does increased storm intensity interact with sea-level rise. We also wanted to look at how these changes will interact with existing human constraints like the dike system.

The dike system changes where fresh water and sediment go, how long fresh water spends in the estuary, how much large wood is in the estuary, what kind and how much habitat is possible. And, obviously, dikes prevent habitats from moving inland as seas rise. All those things affect the resiliency and health of the estuary, and its ability to adapt to a changing climate.

Nature.org: How will the Sea-Level Rise Learning Network help us do our work better?

Roger Fuller: We recognize that all coastal sites are facing similar questions. At Port Susan we’ll develop ways of looking at and trying to answer these questions. One of the things the Sea-Level Rise Network has helped us do is to make connections with other sites where people are wrestling with similar questions.

So, thanks to input from folks on the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico, the Central American reef, and the south Pacific islands, we’re helping develop a model that sites around the world will be able to use to guide restoration and natural resource management in the face of climate change.

Nature.org: Given everything that you are learning, how are you feeling about the future of our planet?

Roger Fuller: I think that we are in for some really big challenges, that we have the ability to respond to those challenges and adapt what we do on the ground to make systems like these estuaries resilient to those changes. But that’ll require some big changes in how we as society choose to use and take care of the lands and waters on which we depend, and perhaps the biggest challenge ahead will be whether we have the political will and social adaptability to make those changes.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos © Briget Besaw (Roger Fuller, Salmon)