"Converting low marsh to high marsh will help offset erosion caused by rising sea level"

"On the Atlantic Flyway, it takes more than a handful of gravel or an asphalt patch to fix a pothole. It takes a giant dredge pumping an arc of slurry at rock-concert decibels for hours at a time, day after day, with funding that would make many municipal road managers envious.

But these are no ordinary potholes, and the flyway is no road. It’s a major migration route for a host of songbirds, shorebirds and waterfowl. And one of its most important pit stops, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, is in jeopardy as water gobbles holes in the vast golden-brown marsh on which the birds rely, as do fish, crabs and other wildlife.

This $1.4 million “thin-layering” project, as the dredge-pumping has come to be called, is the first of its kind in the Chesapeake Bay. From late November until mid-December, the refuge and its partners transferred 26,000 cubic yards of sediment from the Blackwater River to 40 acres of marsh near a boat ramp called Shorters Wharf."

Rona Kobell reports for the Bay Journal February 5, 2017. [2]