Image

Scientific Assembly Line

November 21, 2018

It took a village of researchers to process a tube of sediments cored from Great Barnstable Salt Marsh on Cape Cod. Working in WHOI biogeochemist Amanda Spivak‘s lab are, from left, graduate student Sheron Luk, guest student Madelyn Francescon, research assistant Kelsey Gosselin, and Allyson Boggess, a National Association of Geoscience Teachers/U.S. Geological Survey intern. In the 1930s, the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project dug 1,500 miles of ditches across Cape marshes to help tidal flows and prevent mosquito breeding. Spivak is studying how this might have changed the marsh’s ability to store carbon and  protect coasts against sea level rise. (Photo by Laura Castañón, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)