South Teams Research and Reimagine Marsh Grass on Dauphin Island

Posted on August 22, 2025

University of South Alabama students, faculty and volunteers planted 16,000 plugs of salt marsh grass along the shore of Dauphin Island during the summer. Each planting is a step toward protecting the fragile coast from erosion, storm surge and other threats.

Along the shore of Aloe Bay on Dauphin Island, the tide lapped against a new green fringe of native salt marsh grass. About an hour after sunrise on a Wednesday in late July, two teams from South gathered, coming from different scientific directions with a common aim — protecting and boosting the viability of that marsh grass for generations to come.

The scene unfolded on a sandy stretch of land the USA Foundation donated to South in 2023, just down the shore from the future site of the school’s outdoor classroom on the bay.

From the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Associate Professor Ron Baker’s group focused on strategic planting and long-term monitoring to track how the shoreline changes over time.

Biology Associate Professor Jeremiah Henning and master’s student Camille Thompson came one step closer in their quest to find out whether a specific marsh grass planted with beneficial root fungi will grow stronger and more resilient.

Both efforts rely on Spartina alterniflora, a hardy salt marsh plant that stabilizes shorelines and creates vital habitat for fish, shellfish and birds.

For Baker’s group, Spartina is a living signal of how well the shoreline is holding, now and in the future. During the summer, Baker coordinated a project that brought around 100 volunteers and students who planted 16,000 salt marsh plugs of Spartina along the shore in just two days.

For the biologists on the shore, this work is “proof of concept” to generate preliminary data for a three-year, $1.1 million National Science Foundation-funded study; Henning will serve as one of three principal investigators. Henning and Thompson see Spartina as the center of a game-changing ecological experiment.

Students planting marsh grass on Dauphin Island

A close up shot of a student planting marsh grass in the sand

Recently planted marsh grass on the shoreline of Dauphin Island

Professors planting marsh grass as part of their study

Working together, students and faculty are transforming the shoreline one handful of grass at a time. These seemingly small gestures could lead to lasting change: Beyond their simple beauty, these grasses will stabilize the beach and create habitat for coastal wildlife. Bottom right, associate professors Dr. Jeremiah Henning, left, and Dr. Ron Baker led student groups in planting the rows of Spartina alterniflora.

At the shoreline, teams from both groups planted 2,000 Spartina plugs that Thompson had inoculated with a mix of native fungi she gathered from other isolated marshes around the island.

“The idea is that these fungal partners may help the plants tolerate high salinity and transplant stress,” Thompson said.

For the study, Baker’s group laid out experimental plots with different planting densities, allowing researchers and future students to monitor which layouts work best under wave and boat-wake pressure.

Henning and Thompson will be scaling up next summer, taking the knowledge gained at Aloe Bay all the way to the Texas coast, where bays are becoming saltier due to rising sea levels that push the water inland, in addition to a reduction of rainfall in South Texas.

“Aloe Bay gives us a chance to test our approach and gather real data before expanding,” said Thompson, whose master's thesis sets the stage for that larger effort. After completing her master’s, she plans to continue to work on the project as a Ph.D. student under Henning’s guidance.

“This is a great opportunity to gather real-world data and see how local fungi affect plant survival,” she said. “It’s exciting to know that what we’re learning here could help shape restoration efforts in other parts of the Gulf.”

Camille Thompson, a master’s student in biology, digs into the sand before tucking a blade of Spartina into place. Her thesis centers on the plant’s role in strengthening the shoreline.

Audio Transcript:

My name is Camille Thompson. I'm a second-year graduate student, and currently I'm studying mycorrhizal fungi and the mutualistic benefits with salt marsh vegetation. Here at South with the ocean only being 45 minutes away, it's really easy to take trips back and forth for monitoring reasons. So it's been very helpful that the University is so close to these coastal ecosystems. I've always been interested in marine biology. I think I my interest got piqued at about 10 years old, and as I have been seeing these things kind of develop with climate change, the question has always been in my head, "Okay, how are we going to stop it, fix it, change it?" That is the thing that drives me is just trying to preserve and restore as much as we can. I love having free weekends to go to the beach. People say that if you live near the beach, then it's not as exciting to you getting to go. That has not been proven to me so far. Definitely a happy place.

Alex Rodriguez, Baker’s lab manager, has a role that takes place both on land and in the air, using multi-spectral drone imagery to assess plant health from above — a technique that will add another layer of analysis and student learning opportunity.

“The cameras of multi-spectral drones include pictures of what’s not visible to the naked eye,” said Rodriguez, who is based at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. “From this imagery, we can measure the ‘greenness’ of the plants, telling us what plants are healthy and thriving. So, we can monitor how this restoration progresses, and being just five minutes from our office allows us to do that regularly.”

This collaboration to restore and sustain a vulnerable shore with a robust spread of Spartina could have a lengthy legacy. “This gives us an opportunity to not just teach students how to survey vegetation,” Baker said. “They can actually do it in a way where they can ask the question, ‘Which of these experimental treatments works best?’ Students will be able to study it and track its progress for years to come.”

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