BE ND I NG Adapting to Climate Change in Rhode Island Coastal Plant Communities Shannon Kingsley & Nadia Lahlaf
Contents
Preface Acknowledgements
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Herbarium
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Salt Marsh
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Natural History
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Species List
99
Conclusion
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Appendix
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Preface
As climate change exacerbates hundreds of years of anthropogenic pressures on salt marsh habitats, much of the public remains unaware of the environmental importance of these ecosystems. A salt marsh absorbs its surroundings; it takes in the tides and filters nutrients, while curbing erosion and protecting coastal communities. This habitat also gives back to the ecosystems that it supports, providing refuge and food to many fish and bird species. In order to understand and track the effects of climate change on this habitat, we turn to botanical records in herbaria to find answers to questions of species abundance, plant diversity, and historical trends. An herbarium — a collection of pressed plant specimens with specific labels indicating the time and place in which each plant existed — blends science and natural history. With an emphasis on observation and collection, natural history gives dimensionality to our knowledge of science, blending what we observe with what we know. As the health of salt marsh habitats, the use of herbarium specimens, and the study of natural history rapidly decline, it becomes imperative to heighten awareness about their importance to future scientific inquiry and the effects of climate
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change. Each of the topics in this book compliments and informs each other, creating for a more diverse exchange of knowledge and fueling questions and propositions for the future of our changing world. During a ten-week period during the summer of 2018, we studied the effects of climate change on Tillinghast Place in Barrington, Rhode Island, through the collection and documentation of botanical specimens. We also performed focused investigations into herbaria records dating back to 1845, as compiled in the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria, to compare what we observed today with what we believe could have grown at our site. To culminate our summer of research, we created BENDING: Adapting to Climate Change in Rhode Island Coastal Plant Communities, a book that narrates the decline of salt marshes and herbaria and emphasizes the ecological value and visual beauty of these spaces to underscore their importance and enhance appreciation.
Acknowledgements
This project was supported by the National Science Foundation Rhode Island C-AIM Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program under Award #OIA-1655221. This project would not have been possible without support from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, Brown University, and the Brown University Herbarium. Thank you to the Nature Lab staff, including Neal Overstrom, Director and RISD C-AIM Principal Investigator; Jennifer Bissonnette, Biological Programs Designer; and Lucia Monge, RISD C-AIM Coordinator and Researcher. A special thank you to Nature Lab Research Assistant, Stewart Copeland, for his incredible support, guidance, and care. Thank you also to the Brown University Herbarium staff, including Timothy Whitfeld, Herbarium Director; and Martha Cooper, Curatorial Assistant. Furthermore, a special thank you Molly Howarth, senior RISD Illustration major, for her artistic contributions, and to Coleen Kingsley for her editing expertise.
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Herbarium Lathyrus japonicus
backflips across the page,
its slivered stem curved
as it spreads its leaves like eager arms,
its performance for the sun now captured
between a sheet of folded newspaper.
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Pressed into permanence between cardboard, blotter paper, and a wooden frame after being dug from its dune home at Tillinghast Place, Lathyrus japonicus (commonly known as beach pea) now splays itself across the page, its oncepurple flowers greyed and its leaflets flopped over the newspaper heading: “WEEK IN UNREQUITED LOVE.” With its tendrilled pinkies curled around the dead stem of last year’s grass, clinging for support to an organism unaware of its existence, Lathyrus knows all about unrequited love.
Yet, the unassuming nature of this fragile plant belies its importance to the story of climate change in the salt marshes ringing Rhode Island’s coast. Lathyrus japonicus and other plant species must continuously bend and react to a changing environment.
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Herbarium
Beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) with pods; Canon eos5D photograph
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Herbarium
Beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) flowers; macropod image created through focus stacking, compositing sixty-five individual macro photographs
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Martha, the Brown University Herbarium curator, caresses the back of the beach pea with a thin spatula, lifts it up, and gingerly places it onto the thick white paper, supporting the plant as if it were a sleeping infant placed in a cradle. Her tools are orderly arranged on the lab bench before us: white sheet, medical tweezers, herbarium glue, spatula, Elmer’s glue.
Meticulous about the glue gumming up the nozzle, Martha admonishes us to clean the bottles when we finish our work. She also explains the difficulty in manipulating the plant once it’s dry, so we need to be mindful of how we want the final specimens to look while pressing
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them in the field. Armed with the assortment of tools and tips, we listen as Martha walks us through the steps of the mounting process:
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Herbarium
Climbing bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) specimen with glue dotted on the back before mounting
Bending Pressed common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia) specimen
First established in 1877 by botanist William Whitman Bailey, the Brown University Herbarium holds more than 100,000 species collected throughout the world, from the United States, Haiti and Ireland to China, India and Algeria.
File cabinets store the collected specimens, mounted and strapped to white sheets of paper.Each paper spread contains a label specifying the collector, collection number, location, and date of collection. The label also includes the habitat in which a specimen lived before it
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was plucked, pruned, or pulled from its environment, as well as the assemblage of species with which it was found. These file cabinets stand floor to ceiling high, arranged row after row, cemented to the notions of taxonomy, rigidity, and permanence — all crucial to the pursuit of accurate documentation of plant diversity. A “perfect� herbarium specimen is a mounted and strapped plant possessing fruits and/or flowers, with a label that details the exact GPS coordinates of its location, its habitat information, and the other species found nearby.
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Yet, not all specimens benefit from the type of painstaking preservation undertaken today. Smilax rotundifolia, collected in the early September days of 1883 in a roadside thicket in Newport County, is now nestled in a Manilla folder home. Yet, it suffers from the specificities of location and preservation techniques inaccessible to nineteenth-century botanists. With the left corner of the paper chewed off and brown imprints of leaves smudged into the tanning paper, the Smilax specimen appears changed and aged from its herbarium shelf life. A permanent inhabitant of the Brown Herbarium, Smilax is messy and missing crucial information, such as the latitude and longitude of its Newport home. What other species grew with it? Did its leaves always don that dark mustard brown cloak? Despite its shortcomings, however, the woody vine confidently fills up the tanned paper spread, its tendrils choking out its own stem, the thorns rigid, the native plant maintaining its natural spunk. Smilax, although “imperfect,� remains an important documentation of species growth at a specific time in a certain type of Rhode Island habitat.
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their environments, these specimens of the past aid in biodiversity studies that serve to track these changes in habitat patterns through time.
Common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia); Canon eos5D photograph
On a basic level, this collected specimen establishes that Smilax grew in Rhode Island in 1883, an important piece of information because it gives us a sense of the floristic makeup of the state at this time in history. Furthermore, as climate changes force plants to adapt and react to
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Common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia) herbarium specimen from 1883; courtesy of the Brown Herbarium
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Herbarium
Fast forwarding 135 years, we again have collected Smilax rotundifolia. This time, it was found wrestling the invasive climbing bittersweet in the transition edge between the upland and wetland areas at Tillinghast Place. The way the two climbing vines entangle each other, both at war to assert their existence, makes it difficult at first glance to distinguish the native from the non-native plant. On Smilax rotundifolia’s label, it reads:
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Herbarium specimen: Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum)
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Herbarium specimen: Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)
Various herbarium specimens: Climbing bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus); English oak (Quercus robur); Mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium vulgatum)
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In a 2004 study surveying specimens from seventy-one herbaria across the United States, plant taxonomists reported that the number of specimens added to herbaria progressively increased up until the 1930s. For the majority of herbaria surveyed, the 1930s saw a peak in activity for accessioned specimens. The study concluded that on an individual basis, most herbaria are experiencing a decrease in the number of new specimens added per year. However, for many herbaria, the patterns of accession per decade showed fluctuations. These fluctuations underscore the inconsistency of collection and accession efforts. Although the Brown Herbarium was not included in this study, this general pattern of decade-to-decade fluctuations in activity also applies to its collection. The Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria (CNH), an extensive online database compiling more than one million digitized specimens from thirty-nine collections housed in the northeastern United States, serves as a guiding tool to highlight
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At Tillinghast Place, we troweled cheatgrass from the sandy substrate of its dune habitat, rinsed the roots under the tap back at the herbarium, pressed the grass, and later flopped its gluey body onto a white sheet. A non-native species in Rhode Island that often colonizes meadows, fields, and disturbed habitats, cheatgrass’s presence in the dune proved surprising, prodding us to speculate about the reason for its appearance in this habitat. However, without accurate documentation of the grass’s growth in Rhode Island over the past forty years, we are left guessing as to the wheres and whys of its spread to this habitat.
Various herbarium specimens: Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum); Sweet grass (Anthoxanthum nitens); Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis)
these fluctuations and gaps in the collection record. For example, according to CNH, from 1868 to 1930, twenty-seven species of Bromus tectorum (or cheatgrass), were collected in Rhode Island. However, from 1930 to 1978, a mere seven specimens of cheatgrass were added to the Consortium. The most recent specimen of cheatgrass was last collected in 1978 in Warren, Rhode Island.
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Herbarium specimen: Morrow’s honeysuckle (Lonicera morrowii)
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Herbarium specimen: Fox grape (Vitis labrusca)
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Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum); cyanotype
Bromus tectorum Under the harsh fluorescent light of the herbarium, we pinch off pieces of the grass and coax them with the tips of tweezers across the lab bench. A click of the top light floods the bench in a perfect circle of bright yellow and an adjustment of the magnification sharpens the outline of the grass under inspection. Under the scope, we line up the ruler next to the lemma, a bract-like part of the grass’s floret. The magnified view reveals the length of the lemma — 10.6 mm long. Consulting New England Wild Flower Society’s Flora Novae Angliae, a dichotomous key offering a series of two-part choices to identify plant species, I read this description: “Lemmas 9-12 mm long; anthers 0.5-1 mm long; awns 10-18 mm long; lower panicle branches bearing 4-8 spikelets.” A lemma that was 1.6 mm longer would have told us it was another species, Bromus sterilis. According to the key, Bromus tectorum, or cheatgrass, can be found in fields, roadsides, disturbed soil, cracks in pavement and sidewalks. But at Tillinghast Place, we found this non-native species feathering out in the lower dune habitat, an uncommon place for this species to reside.
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For Salicornia, a common, succulent-like salt marsh plant known for its ability to incorporate large quantities of salt into its cells, the quarter-century between 1988 to 2014 represents a period in which not a single species was added to any of the CNH collections. These types of gaps in the herbarium collection for Rhode Island leave holes in our understanding of plant biodiversity; species abundance; species distribution; and species tolerance and adaptations in specific locations and habitats. This ultimately renders any inquiries into the past inconclusive. By conducting location- and habitat-based collections that occur consistently through time, scientists can more precisely document plant diversity and species abundance, as well as make better informed decisions in environmental and ecological efforts, such as conservation and land management.
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Assorted leaves and flowers from Morrow’s honeysuckle (Lonicera morrowii), beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus), and beach rose (Rosa rugosa); arranged and scanned on a flatbed scanner
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1. Assemble your tools for collection and specify the plant you would like to collect.
Illustrations by Molly Howarth; pen and ink
2. Take your clipping shears and snip the plant, cutting the stem at an angle. If the plant is small enough to dig up, use your trowel to dig up the plant, being careful to preserve the roots. Shake off any dirt.
3. Open up the newspaper and place your specimen inside. Lay it out the way you would like it to look in its final state. Flip over some leaves.
Plant Collecting 4. Record important information about the specimen, such as height, flower color, habitat, nearby species, and weather conditions. Give your specimen a collecting number and record this number in your notebook and on the newspaper. Also, record the date and the location.
5. Place your newspaper containing the specimen on a sheet of blotter paper. Sandwich these two between two pieces of cardboard. Put the cardboard sandwich in between the wooden frames and tighten the straps.
6. After a few days, remove the plant from the press and check its progress. If the specimen is still moist, keep it in the press for a few more days.
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The rigor of historical plant diversity studies also suffers from vagueness and occasional inaccuracy in collection and documentation practices. From 1903 to 2016, only six species of Suaeda calceoliformis (horned seablite) were collected and documented in Rhode Island and among these herbarium records, one specimen lacks a collection date and several include only vague notions of habitat, such as “Rhode Island,” Salt Pond” and “Rhode Island, Washington.” The unsatisfying sparseness in quantity and quality of horned seablite collections leaves unanswered questions about plant diversity, growth patterns, and species abundance in Rhode Island over more than a century.
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Beach rose (Rosa rugosa) specimen dotted with glue before mounting
Nevertheless, these imperfections in collection and documentation do not discount the importance of herbarium specimens. The work of past botanists to faithfully collect and preserve this history proves important to future researchers’ understanding of trends over time. With climate change posing an increasingly more serious threat to biodiversity and the survival of crucial species, more consistent and deliberate collection methods are necessary in order to create a more systematic and extensive database to track changes in the growth, distribution and abundance of plant species in Rhode Island.
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In the specimen preparation room — the room adjacent to the one housing file cabinets — Martha sits for hours methodically arranging plants on paper, each specimen a unique work of art. Transformed from a once-dingy basement collection of specimens into a multiroom, ventilated, accessible space, the Brown Herbarium now serves as a systematized collection where visiting scientists can use specimens for comparison and identification purposes, request plant parts for DNA testing, and perform species abundance and distribution studies like the one we conducted this summer.
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Herbarium specimen: Beach rose (Rosa rugosa)
Yet, even a highly systematic space like the Herbarium allows for a bit of whimsy. In one file cabinet, a cardboard box holds unidentified pine cones, some dangling stiff on their branches, a collection resembling the fall decorations one might find in attic storage. In the same way that Martha’s mounting process activates both the front and back of leaves, an herbarium specimen engages both sides of a plant; it captures its life while also embodying its history. Straddling the space between the worlds of cold metal cabinets and cardboard boxes of assorted pine cones, medical tweezers and gentle hands, a Canon camera and a 1,000page dichotomous key, the Brown Herbarium gives specimens a second life. This kind of rebirth as records of Rhode Island botanical history proves crucial to our understanding of the past and our future.
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Tillinghast Place; Canon eos5D photograph
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Shannon Kingsley and Tim Whitfeld in the salt marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
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Sa lt M a r sh
Long before we dot glue onto the backs of leaves and flowers in the air-conditioned herbarium, our collection begins at a 35-acre stretch of sloping fields, salt marsh, and beachfront in Barrington, Rhode Island.
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Notched into the Narragansett Bay shoreline, RISD’s Tillinghast Place sits off Nayatt Road, bordered to the west by the Rhode Island Country Club and the east by a Carmelite Monastery for reclusive nuns. The historic Nayatt Point Lighthouse stands as sentry in the
Common reed (Phragmites australis) in the salt marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
distance beyond the property’s westernmost point. After tucking trowels and clippers into our back pockets and coating our skin in sun-
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screen, we make our way to the top of the sloping hill. Beyond it, between us and the ocean, lies a swath of grass, a patch of disturbed forest bordering the upland and wetland habitats, a salt marsh, and, a little farther, a beach strand flecked with towels and people. The salt marsh, a coastal wetland flooded regularly by the tides, is split into a west and east side by a footpath.
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We begin to maneuver along the path, the trail bordered by Calystegia sepium (hedge bindweed) ribboning its slender stem around stalks of Phragmites (common reed). This reed, a pernicious invasive, gestures its feathery seedheads lazily in the wind, deceptively inviting. Swaths of Spartina patens and Spartina alterniflora pan out on both sides of the path, the cord grasses brushed like hair in the wind. Spartina patens (saltmeadow cordgrass) dominates the high salt marsh areas that experience less flooding, while Spartina alterniflora (smooth cordgrass) — with its complex root system and ability to uptake high salt concentrations — defends the low salt marsh zones more susceptible to increased flooding.
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Various views of the salt marsh; Canon eos5D photographs
Aerial photograph of Tillinghast Place, showing the path through the salt marsh and the dune habitat at the bottom; orthomosaic composed of DJI Mavic Pro drone photographs
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Aerial view of Tillinghast Place from various years 1995–2016; Google Satellite photographs 1995 2002
2004 2006
2008 2009
2014
2015
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2003
2007
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2010
2016
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On both sides of the footpath, massive ditches crater the earth, remnants of ditching projects undertaken in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Stakes and hay knives, spades and potato hooks in hand, the men of the CCC began manually removing significant sections of New England salt marshes as an attempt to decrease mosquito populations. They thought this would reduce standing water and help drain the waterlogged ground. They also thought these ditching efforts would increase the growth of saltmeadow cordgrass for livestock grazing. Although well-intentioned, the CCC’s ditching efforts are now thought to have caused more damage than benefit to salt marshes.
Today, ninety percent of southern New England salt marshes have been ditched, a teetering statistic that has left the zonation patterns, species abundance, and growth forms of these habitats permanently altered.
In a study of New England salt marshes and the effects of waterlogging on plant communities, ecologists Patrick Ewanchuk and Mark Bertness assert how 1930s’ ditching efforts in New England salt marshes greatly altered the distribution of species in the waterlogged
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habitat, known as “forb pannes.” They found that ditching contributed to the transformation of these highly saline areas dominated by salttolerant herbaceous species (such as Plantago maritima) to a habitat predominantly covered by saltmeadow cordgrass and smooth cordgrass. As ditching drained the waterlogged soils, the forb panne species — well-adapted to poor drainage areas — decreased, while these cordgrass species proliferated.
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Aerial photograph of ditching in the salt marsh; orthomosaic composed of DJI Mavic Pro drone photographs
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As captured by this drone photograph, smooth cordgrass lines the ditched areas of the marsh, its swaying movement like tube feet on the underside of a starfish. In the high salt marsh, saltmeadow cordgrass plays chameleon in the wind, its colors changing from yellow to
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green as the gusts effortlessly move the grass blades. These cordgrasses are crucial to holding together a salt marsh habitat because they help curb erosion, filter nutrients, and provide food energy to its inhabitants. A salt marsh produces more food energy per acre than any other known ecosystem. Furthermore, seventy percent of commercial fish species rely on a salt marsh for food, refuge, or as a nursery habitat for at least part of their life cycles.
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Although the cordgrasses sustain the salt marsh at Tillinghast Place, the ditching efforts and their effect on the succession of salt marsh habitats across New England serve as a reminder of how human manipulation of nature can change the composition of a community. And, oftentimes, this can cause irreversible alterations to habitats. Although the exact repercussions of the 1930s’ ditching efforts remain under investigation, the biotic makeup of these salt marsh communities was definitely altered, a change that we as humans must accept and resolve to work toward rectifying. The ecological value of these brackish communities, misunderstood and underappreciated during the twentieth century, continues to be undermined today — an issue more pressing than ever due to the increasing effects of climate change.
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Although we can never really make amends for past ecological mistakes, through micro-actions such as appreciation and respect for salt marshes, education about their environmental importance, and continued collection and documentation of their plant diversity, we can make changes that ultimately will serve to benefit our environment and climate on a macro scale.
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Illustration by Molly Howarth; pen and ink with watercolor
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These molecules, called greenhouse gases, absorb the heat bouncing back off the Earth, resulting in an increase in Earth’s temperature. They increase in abundance as the Earth gets warmer.
With an increase in evaporation rates comes an increase in precipitation, which leads to sea level rise and stronger tidal floodings. Rainfall is marginally acidic due to dissolved CO2, which erodes rocks and contributes to mineral runoff into oceans and rivers.
The melting of the glacial ice caps also causes sea levels to rise.
Ocean regions dominated by evaporation have experienced increases in ocean salinity, whereas rainfall-dominated regions have become increasingly fresh. This type of runoff includes two major ions in their dissolved states: Cl- and Na+, which contribute to the increase in the ocean’s salt concentrations.
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An increase in the temperature of the atmosphere aids in the increase in evaporation rates because warmer air can absorb H2O more efficiently than cooler air.
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Erosion represents another challenge facing salt marshes in Rhode Island. Due primarily to the rise in sea level as a result of climate change, the shorelines of salt marshes become eroded as species typically able to populate these areas suffer from constant wave inundation and the influx of nutrients. In many cases, species better able to withstand an onset of environmental pressures will dominate these changing environments. One such species is Phragmites australis, an invasive grass. Although Phragmites most often takes over the upland edges of a salt marsh, the effects of this invasive species can be observed at Tillinghast Place’s westernmost edge. Here, Phragmites marches assertively to the edges of the shoreline. According to salt marsh research conducted by civil engineer Nicoletta Leonardi and colleagues at Boston University, there exists a constant relationship between wave speed and speed of salt marsh erosion. Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that moderate storms pose more of a threat to salt marshes than hurricanes or other extreme weather events. Moderate storms impact the marsh most profoundly because of their increasing frequency, height and strength. Sergio Fagherazzi, a member of the research team, asserts that unlike dunes and beaches during storms, salt marshes do not just collapse under impact. Instead, they erode away, a paradoxical consequence of climate change that proves both positive and negative; the erosion points to their resilience, but also to their decline.
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Eroded area of the salt marsh where common reed (Phragmites australis) grows to the edge of the marsh, its roots holding together mud from the marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
It is important that we continue to value, appreciate, maintain, and restore salt marshes, invaluable natural habitats that serve not only as nurseries and food sources to fish and other wildlife, but also as crucial tools of coastal protection.
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Common reed (Phragmites australis); digitally manipulated cyanotype
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native species: a species that is indigenous to a certain region
non-native species: a species that is not native to a region, but whose presence is not necessarily harmful and can often positively affect the diversity of a plant community
invasive species: a non-native species that causes harm by competing with native species for resources, altering the species abundance and diversity in a given area, affecting soil chemistry, and/or shifting the ecosystem’s food web
Phragmites australis: Phragmites australis is one of the main invasive species threatening salt marsh habitats along the east coast of the United States. Looming at about 2 meters tall and growing in dense stands, Phragmites australis proves very successful in its ability to quickly colonize the edges of salt marshes, often pushing out native plant communities. Research shows that the increased nitrogen availability and decreased salinity levels that occur in salt marshes due to shoreline development most likely facilitate the invasion of Phragmites. Interestingly, the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria is void of a single specimen record of Phragmites americanus, a grass species native to Rhode Island. However, this gap guished as two distinct species.
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may exist in part because up until recently, the grasses were not distin-
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Virginia glasswort (Salicornia depressa) growing in the marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
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Deeper into the salt marsh, among the saltmeadow cordgrass, miniature clusters of Salicornia depressa (Virginia glasswort) emerge from the mud, their stems swollen with salt water, like jointed fingers stretching outward. And in the higher elevated areas where the
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tidal flooding remains relatively low, Juncus gerardii (saltmarsh rush) and Iva frutescens (saltmarsh elder) assemble together, straddling the line between high salt marsh and dune habitats.
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Saltmarsh elder (Iva frutescens); cyanotype
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Saltmarsh rush (Juncus gerardii); cyanotype
Bending Saltmarsh rush (Juncus gerardii); macropod image created through focus stacking, compositing sixty-five individual macro photographs
The salt marsh merges with the dune, a transition that reveals the growth of dune plants Ammophila breviligulata (American beachgrass), Lathyrus japonicus (beach pea), Euphorbia maculata (spotted spurge), and Anthoxanthum nitens (sweet grass). These native species flourish and coexist in the sandy substrate. Vital to humans for their role in protecting property and crucial to the ecosystem for curbing overflooding of salt marshes, dunes help blunt the strength of storm waves. They serve as the most natural, cost-effective way to protect beachfront property and the adjoining salt marsh community.
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In 2013, a team of biologists, geologists, and facility workers, including people from RISD, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Save the Bay, partnered together to carry out the Barrington Beach Salt Marsh Adaptation Project. This project worked to re-establish a dune at Tillinghast Place by redirecting foot traffic, planting American beachgrass, and excavating the existing creeks created by ditching. These efforts were carried out so as to alleviate the effects of impounded water damage and curb the impact of higher tides on the salt marsh. The project also worked to redirect the tidal channel eastward to encourage increased drainage of the marsh, as well as reconnect sand to the dune system that had been previously cut off by the channel.
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As an overall increase in precipitation brings an onset of higher tides and destructive storm surges to coastal communities, the dunes bunkered on many coastal beaches prove insufficient in their protective role. Complicating matters is the relationship between the destruction of dunes and the booming sand industry. According to Nature, beach sand represents a dynamic material, composed of loose granular minerals and formed from the erosion of rocks, the decomposition of coral reefs and shells, and the accumulation of various biological precipitates. Sand amasses on beaches and dunes, drifts down coasts, gets swept away by waves and storms, and then returns again to rest on the shorelines. In his New Yorker piece, journalist David Owens discusses the grave complexities of the sand industry, citing the destructive environmental effects of sand mining. He also discusses the cyclical nature of destruction that results from both coastal restoration efforts and resource extraction for recreational activities, such as golf and volleyball. In the United States, the major use of sand involves restoring
shorelines eroded by ever-increasing sea levels and the devastation caused by ocean storms. However, this restoration process often creates more environmental problems as the United States depletes sand deposits worldwide, thus contributing to the cycle of environmental destruction.
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Owen states, “Building houses and creating artificial dunes to protect them are mutually reinforcing interventions, because the houses turn the dunes into necessities and the dunes make the houses seem rational.� Although not implemented to protect coastal homes, the dune restoration at Tillinghast Place did not contribute to this destructive sand mining industry. Instead, the planting of American beachgrass, the installation of a snow fence, and the excavation of the ditched creeks at Tillinghast Place were used as natural ways to curb the effects of climate change on the salt marsh habitat.
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Salt marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
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Adjoining Tillinghast Place is the Rhode Island Country Club Golf Course, a 200-acre manicured stretch of land consisting of an 18-hole course founded in 1911. Although the golf course and the dunes and beach strand of Tillinghast Place differ in their roles within the greater human-centered community, their existences remain inextricably linked to climate change. Golfing, a $70 billion industry in the United States that occupies more than 2.3 million acres of land, also drives the sand industry, extracting natural resources from across the globe and destroying the deep-sea homes of ocean dwellers, such as sea turtles and fish. Furthermore, the fertilizers employed to maintain golf courses, which typically contain high levels of nitrogen, get absorbed into the ground and can run off into adjacent plant communities.
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to the presence of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to preventing heat from escaping the Earth’s lower atmosphere. Salt marshes are crucial to filtering toxins and excess nutrients that run off from upland areas. However, these nitrogen-based fertilizers cause stress on the salt marsh plant communities, thus compromising the survival rates of the fish and crab populations that rely on this habitat for protection and food.
Climbing Bittersweet specimen with glue dotted on the back before mounting
An influx of nutrients can threaten the survival of native plant species, which struggle to take in copious nutrients. Meanwhile, invasive species — often better adapted to more extreme environments — can take over, pushing out the native species. These fertilizers also contribute
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Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis); Canon eos5D photograph
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The transition edge, salt marsh, dune and beach habitats at Tillinghast Place support thirteen species of grass, an assemblage that sustains this diverse site. Tillinghast Place, often frequented by kids, students, and other local beachgoers, maintains a level of plant diversity in striking contrast to the Rhode Island Coun-
Human and plant communities need not be divided by human manipulation, but rather can coexist — and endure — when we engage with nature in intentional, educated, and respectful ways. The balance between control and preservation proves central to meaningful and impactful interactions in nature. In turn, this balance is crucial on both social and personal levels as we remain mindful of how our actions contribute to climate change and its resulting effects on the Earth.
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try Club golf course and the monocultured grass species dominating its expanse. The juxtaposition of the beach and dunes with the adjoining golf course and ocean- side homes serves not only as a nagging reminder of human influence on the coastal community, but also reinforces the complexity of managing such distinct zones of human-plant occupation.
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Shannon Kingsley and Tim Whitfeld documenting species in the salt marsh; Canon eos5D photograph
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Watercolor illustration of perennial pea (Lathyrus latifolius) by Alexander Marshal; artist study by Nadia Lahlaf
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Natur al History
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Saltmarsh rush (Juncus gerardii); digitally-manipulated cyanotype
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Aldrovandi, an influential natural historian during Renaissance Europe, represents one of the countless thinkers who studied the natural world in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the connections between the biotic and abiotic environments. The study of natural history during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encouraged observations and explorations of the biotic world. It also emphasized the importance of natural history collections and both the scientific and artistic documentation of natural objects.
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Inside 4,000 drawers, 18,000 collected natural objects rest, the physical manifestation of a lifetime spent scribbling suppositions about the lives of flowers and fossils, clay pots and birds, moons and minerals. Fueled by the processes of possession, identification, and repetition, Ulisse Aldrovandi believed tactile contact and permanent control would best enable him to understand nature.
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Bending Testing colors for a watercolor illustration
Natural history proves crucial to understanding the world around us, helping us track patterns and habits of organisms and ecosystems and document changes in them. However, it languishes today as a largely underappreciated area of study, as evidenced by its decline in academia. In an article in BioScience, Tewksbury et al. discuss natural history’s decline in research collections and graduate and undergraduate education over the past half-century. The researchers cite how this decline adversely impacts our overall efforts to increase food security, continue conservation and restoration efforts, and engage in environmentally-conscious recreational activities. Addressing one example of the value of natural history, they explain that by studying processes that hinder forest regeneration, such as nutrient depletion, competition, and lack of necessary animals for seed dispersal, researchers can successfully apply these observations to restoration efforts. Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, serves as evidence of this value. Tewksbury et al. note that in the forests of this region, researchers applied their natural history knowledge to restoration efforts to successfully increase forest cover from twenty-four to forty-seven percent of total land area between 1979 and 2005. By studying natural history and
The study of natural history not only allows us to track environmental changes through time and help identify environmental fluctuations and patterns on a macro scale, but it also provides an understanding of the changes and developments that have occurred over time in our scientific knowledge systems. Natural history supplies context for the basis of our scientific knowledge, while also providing an entry point for illuminating people’s motivations for studying nature. The study of natural history also unearths the original procedures and processes these early thinkers pursued and the ways in which people have historically derived meaning and knowledge from their interactions with nature. People often approached the study of the natural world with differing methodologies and preconceived notions about the world, often relating to their environments through religious, economic, or artistic approaches that reinforced their own personal convictions.
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understanding the ways in which it can impact our ideas about species and complex interactions within habitats, researchers can more deliberately and effectively acquire knowledge of the natural world, leading to more skillful applications and interventions.
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Plate from 1522 Aztec herbal, The Bodianus Manuscript; courtesy of the John Hay Library at Brown University
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Herbals represent one crucial part of the pursuit of natural knowledge during the period of 1400 to 1600. These books document the existence of plants and detail their medicinal properties and uses through written word and visuals. Blending together plant descriptions,
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recorded locations of growth, and images, herbals served as a powerful tool for natural philosophers to interpret and convey their ideas about botany and its applicable uses in medicine, while simultaneously systematizing and engaging with nature.
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As evidence of the increasing emphasis on the dissemination of botanical knowledge, English botanist Henry Lyte published A Nievve Herball in 1578, an English translation of Dutch botanist Rembert Dodoens’s infamous herbal Cruydeboeck. Lyte put forth his translation as a way to broaden the audience for botanical knowledge, as well as make modifications and addendums to Dodoens’s knowledge base. Although well-received by English speakers at the time of its publication, Lyte’s translation falls short in one major way: its lack of accurate, detailed visuals to communicate the language of plants. Like many herbals published during this time period, A Nievve Herball contained many images rendered from the same wood blocks used in previously published herbals. Dodoens and Lyte largely recycled the same woodblocks used in German scholar Leonhart Fuchs’s 1542 herbal. This rampant practice of reusing botanical wood blocks negated the changes that could have occurred in the morphology of the plant, discounted any unique features or imperfections in individual plants, and failed to capture the most accurate renderings of the plants.
and morphology of the plant, transcending the language barriers that Lyte desired to break down. Art created with the intention of visually describing, clearly and accurately, a specific idea, object, or phenomenon in the natural or social sciences is considered scientific illustration. Illustration tends to be more utilitarian than other fine arts, focused more on clear communication of the idea being conveyed in the piece. For scientific illustration, accuracy becomes paramount, oftentimes sacrificing aesthetics or artistic interpretation for precise images that render the information in an accessible manner. A simple textbook diagram explaining the water cycle; a painting of a dinosaur in a natural history museum; blackand-white stipple drawings of archaeological artifacts in a history magazine; a chart in the doctor’s office depicting the typical healthy spine; and a simple circuit diagram for electrical engineering all fall into this category of scientific illustration.
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Although written words provide important information about a plant, as evidenced by Lyte’s translation, a description of a plant often falls short of conveying the entire essence of the specimen at hand. Through visual representation, artists can express the nuances, character,
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1542 edition of Fuchs’ De historia stirpium commentarii insignes; courtesy of the John Hay Library at Brown University
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Botanical illustration uniquely stands out in the category of scientific illustration. A wellexecuted work can transcend the limits of scientific illustration, branching into the fine arts, existing in both spheres simultaneously because its conception and execution both serve science and exist as a thing of beauty. Like many art practices, botanical illustration possesses a fluid definition because artists and art historians struggle to place the art form in a rigid category. Some deem the scientific accuracy of the rendered plant as the determinant for whether to label it as a botanical illustration. Others place greater emphasis on the intention of the artist, arguing that any attempt at illustrating a specific plant species can be considered a botanical illustration. Regardless of its nuances, botanical illustration can be broadly defined as an art form based on a focused observation of a specific species that depicts the detail and form of the plant.
globe, taking on many different forms and medias, influencing scientists, artists, and laypeople for centuries, and ultimately informing our human-plant understanding and interactions.
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Historically, people have drawn plants for a variety of purposes: for medicine, as in herbals; for botanical study, as in a published book on a country’s native flora; for aesthetics, as in ornamentals with plant designs; for pleasure, as a meditative, rewarding exercise to connect with nature. The focus of the piece may be scientific accuracy or the spirit of the plant. Despite the artists’ intentions, this art practice spans the
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Botanical illustration is as old as humankind’s fascination with nature itself, dating back from prehistoric times and continuing to flourish today. Since the earliest known instances of plant drawings in cave paintings, artists have iterated upon the botanical illustration, faithfully capturing color, form, gesture, and minute detail. In the first century AD, European herbals were illustrated with woodblock prints, from line drawings of almost rudimentary simplicity that could be easily reproduced. The Aztec empire produced a number of herbals (their creation dates unknown) which featured vibrantly painted illustrations. During the T’ang dynasty in China, which spanned from the seventh through the tenth centuries, flower painting with brush and ink that worked to catch the gesture of the plant in its natural state became well-established. In Renaissance Europe, plants became a subject of artistic interest as flowers were featured in larger oil paintings and artists, such as da Vinci and Dürer, created studies of specific species. The Western tradition of creating botanical illustrations in watercolor began during this period and continues to serve as one of the primary mediums used today. In 1530, German botanist Otto Brunfel’s published Herbarium Vivae Eicones, an herbal containing woodcuts more detailed and refined than previous European works. Brunfel’s work is often considered to be the origin of modern Western botanical illustration.
teenth- and eighteenth-century Japan saw the prolific creation of botanical woodcuts and painted screens. While botanical motifs had for centuries been prominently featured in Middle Eastern art and ornamentation, from North Africa to Persia, the first technical botanical studies were created in the seventeenth century. During the same period, Dutch flower painting majorly influenced European botanical art. The eighteenth century, often considered the golden age of European botanical art, saw the rise of prominent artist Georg Ehret who mastered watercolor in the Linnaean style of botanical illustration. Throughout the nineteenth century, with the rising popularity of travel and horticulture in Europe, botanical art became a much-loved pastime. Lithograph printing, a method that involves chemically etching into a stone to reproduce an image, rose in popularity throughout the twentieth century, while woodcuts — refined with far greater detail than in previous times — resurged as another popular method of printing botanicals.
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By the end of the sixteenth century, etchings on copper plates had become the preferred method of producing and printing botanicals in Europe. In India, botanical and other naturalistic painting flourished under the Mughal empire, and in the sixteenth century Emperor Jahangir founded a school of naturalistic art. Seven-
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With an extensive historic precedent to build upon, botanical illustrators continue to develop this art form today, not in deference to ritualistic tradition but rather as a useful tool. Despite technological advances — namely photography — that seem to supplant the need for hand-drawn renderings, botanical illustration has not been retired to the realm of fine arts or been outcompeted by modern innovations. Still, botanical and natural history artists must frequently justify their practice’s role in modern science. Isn’t a photograph more accessible and quicker to capture? Isn’t a photograph more accurate because it reduces the potential for human error?
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Blackberry flower (Rubus sp.); macropod image created through focus stacking, compositing sixty-five individual macro photographs
Fox grape (Vitis labrusca); macropod image created through focus stacking, compositing sixty-five individual macro photographs
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Of course, photography is an incredibly useful tool for visually capturing and conveying the natural world. However, photography should neither eliminate the demand for nor negate the importance of botanical illustration. Considering scientific illustration as a whole, many
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examples point to the unique power of an illustration: reconstructions, such as a painting of what an Etruscan workshop is thought to have looked like; models, such as a drawing of an atom; overlays, such as an outline of the skeletal structure of an animal superimposed on an image. But because botanical illustration does not fall neatly into any of these categories, the question remains: Why illustrate a given plant specimen by hand when it could simply be photographed?
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Watercolor illustration process
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For one thing, photography is unfailingly tied to reality because the photographer captures the specimen exactly as it exists in a specific time and place. A photograph of a plant includes the details of the backdrop, information on the lighting situation, and the specimen’s imperfections. Although these specificities of place and detail are realistic, they often are not useful in the documentation of a plant specimen and can detract from the important points of the visual. By comparison, the botanical illustrator considers the form, color, and details of a species, carefully composing an image that draws an observer’s attention to details crucial to the understanding of the specimen. In an illustration, a plant may be arranged so that all parts required for species identification are shown clearly, or the illustration may include close-ups, crosssections, and line drawings to accompany the main illustration. The important features may be accentuated, and the rendering may be flattened to highlight pattern and morphology over dimensionality. On a fundamental level, a botanical illustration carries on tradition and preserves a legacy of beautiful artwork, underscoring the inherent visual charm and accessibility of a rendering made by hand.
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As humans always gravitate to beauty, so they inevitably will be drawn to art and nature — the desire to combine the two inextricably linked as long as nature and humankind persist. With the impacts of climate change threatening the richness and longevity of such a future, the study of natural history and its reliance on botanical illustration, photography, and other visual platforms for communication becomes more important than ever.
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Beach rose (Rosa rugosa); watercolor illustration by Nadia Lahlaf
Nadia Lahlaf and Shannon Kingsley exploring the Phragmites stands
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Long-bracted spiderwort (Tradescantia bracteata); macropod image created through focus stacking, compositing sixty-five individual macro photographs
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Species List
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Notebook sketch; all statistics are based off of the Comprehensive Species List and the Tillinghast Species List for only salt marsh, dune, and beach habitats
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The explanations and lists for these two sets of species lists can be found in the appendix on page 109.
Species List
With climate change as the pressing issue for our summer’s explorations, we merged our interests in herbaria, salt marshes, and natural history by engaging in a habitat- and site-based specimen collection and documentation at Tillinghast Place in Barrington. By surveying the site and collecting and recording specimens, we utilized these three main knowledge bases to generate questions about the impacts of climate change on coastal plant communities that would fuel inquiry into patterns of growth, species abundance, and family and species diversity. We also created a Comprehensive Species List for all species that could grow in Rhode Island salt marshes, dunes, and coastal beaches to help track changes through history in statewide habitats and provide comparisons about what we found at Tillinghast versus what could have been expected to grow there.
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Notebook sketch*
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*Any family from the Comprehensive List that has 10 or more species is designated here as a “major family.� Each major family was present at Tillinghast Place in the salt marsh, dune, and beach habitats. In this sketch, the number of species per major family from the Comprehensive Species List is compared to the number of species found in each of these major families in the salt marsh, dune, and beach habitats at Tillinghast Place.
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Species List
Notebook sketch; this graphic includes species found in all the habitat types at Tillinghast Place
Various edible plants found at Tillinghast Place: beach rose (Rosa rugosa); Virginia glassswort (Salicornia depressa); garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata); strawberry (Fragaria sp.); raspberry (Rubus sp.)
So, why do we care?
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Why should you care? 105
Tim Whitfeld and Shannon Kingsley identifying and collecting plants in the salt marsh
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The herbarium, the salt marsh, and natural history studies advocate for contact, immersion, and connectivity. The herbarium supports a history of plants and the interactions between habitats and species, housing the physical documentation of people’s contact with living things through space and time. The salt marsh, with its intricate root systems, soggy substrate, and cratered scars from misguided environmental policies invites people to understand their connection to this habitat and its vital role in linking and sustaining ecosystems. As an amalgamation between the worlds of science and humanities, natural history strives for tactile touch through collection, but also for a full immersion in nature based on observation — a delicate balance between taking a closer look, while also remembering to take a step back. Environmental writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams writes, “Biologist Tim Clark says that at the heart of good biology is a central core of imagination. It is the basis for responsible science. And it has everything to do with intimacy, spending time outside.” The best way for us to better understand our natural world is to personally interact with it. Yet, as we look to nature and engage in these natural spaces — enlightened by a deeper understanding of the world through an appreciation for salt marshes, herbaria and natural history — we must also look inside; inside the herbarium for answers about the past; inside ourselves for the power to work with nature, not against it.
Like the beach pea and the rising tides, the swept cordgrasses and the Phragmites seedheads, we must also bend to the changes in our climate so as to understand our world — and our future — from a vantage of knowledge and respect. 107
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Appendix The Tillinghast Place Species List (2010–2018)
On July 2, 2018, we surveyed Tillinghast Place and compiled a list of all the species we discovered growing in the following habitat types: transition edge between the upland and wetland, salt marsh, and dune/beach strand. A query of the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria (CNH) with the tags “Rhode Island” and “Tillinghast” generated a list of more specimens — all documented and collected between 2016 and 2017 — and these species were added to our list. On August 9, 2010, Frances Topping, Anne Wagner and Sindy Hempstead — members of the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society Botanical Inventory — surveyed Tillinghast Place and created a list of all the species they observed in the same habitats we surveyed during our investigations. We obtained this 2010 species list and added species not already included in our Tillinghast Place species list.
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The Tillinghast Place Species List for 2010–2018 list was finalized and organized detailing the following information: • family name • habitat type • native or non-native status • invasive status • state status (when applicable, marked as: Federally Endangered; Federally Threatened; State Endangered; State Threatened; Concern or State Historical) The Tillinghast Place Species List from 2010–2018 is comprised of 40 species found in the salt marsh, dune, and beach habitats. Although the list includes the species growing in the transition edge at Tillinghast Place, this data is not pertinent to our study of the salt marsh, dune, and beach habitats. Therefore, these species were not analyzed alongside our Comprehensive Species List for all of Rhode Island and these families and species were not included in the numbers generated on pages 100 and 102–103. However, we included them in our species list because they are part of the floristic makeup of the entire Tillinghast site.
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The Comprehensive Species List for All Species that Could Grow in RI Salt Marshes, Dunes, and Coastal Beaches (1845–2018) The comprehensive list consists of 158 species of Rhode Island plants that could grow in salt marsh, dune, and coastal beach habitats. This list was mainly compiled by querying the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria (CNH) and Go Botany. Go Botany, an interactive plant identification website sponsored by the New England Wild Flower Society, was used to tease out which plants could grow in these three habitats in Rhode Island, while queries of the CNH highlighted what actually has grown in these habitats across the state from 1845 to present day. The purpose of this list is to highlight the diversity of plant life that the three types of Rhode Island habitats could support, as well as provide a tool for comparing overall species growth across Rhode Island to the diversity found in these habitats at Tillinghast Place. An initial comprehensive list was first compiled by creating a list of species that grow in “brackish or salt marsh” habitats, “marsh” habitats, “dune” habitats, and “coastal beach” habitats of Rhode Island in accordance with the full key of Go Botany. This initial list was then verified by cross-investigating the species on this list with the documentation of species growing in Rhode Island as early as 1845 based on the CNH.
The species from the initial list were kept on the second iteration of the list if they met the following criteria: 1. They were classified specifically as a species that could inhabit a “brackish or salt marsh habitat,” “dune habitat” or “coastal beach habitat” as detailed in Go Botany. or 2. The species were found in the CNH with overwhelming evidence that they were found in one of the three habitat types. Relevant location types to consider include some of the following: “Salt Pond,” “Salt Swamp,” “dune,” “Nayatt,” “Barrington,” Tillinghast Place,” “Tillinghast,” “Barrington,” 41.73606 -71.31402,” “Quonochontaug,” “New Shoreham,” “Tiverton,” and “Providence.” These locations were confirmed as supporting salt marsh, dune, and/ or beach habitats through the University of Rhode Island’s Ecological Communities Photo Atlas as compiled by URI students Elissa Monahan and Daphne Payne.
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The date and location of the herbarium specimen recorded on the comprehensive list represents the earliest, most relevant herbarium specimen that exists in the CNH. The most relevant herbarium specimen is the specimen of a plant species that was documented to have grown in a Rhode Island location that either definitely, or most likely, belongs to one of the three habitat types.
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Limitations of the Two Species Lists
Recognizing the limitations of this survey, we understand that by not performing a formalized species diversity analysis, we cannot draw precise conclusions about species abundance and species diversity at Tillinghast Place. Furthermore, we surveyed only a portion of the west side of these three habitats at Tillinghast, so plant growth could have differed on the east side due to factors such as soil type, elevation, and nutrient gradient. Our survey at Tillinghast did not take into account these factors, but rather relied solely on what we observed at the site.
The Importance of the Two Species Lists
The comprehensive list is important to the study of tracking plant growth trends in these Rhode Island habitats and can be used in conjunction with the Tillinghast Place species list to generate loose statistics about the abundance of certain families, genera, and native and non-native species at our site. Furthermore, by comparing the two lists, we can better understand whether what we found at Tillinghast was consistent with what we expected to find there, and how our Tillinghast species documentation compared to what species could grow in these habitats, based on queries detailing the types of species these Rhode Island habitats have supported in the past. Comparing the two lists allows us to postulate explanations for why we found some species growing at our site and pose questions about the degree of novelty for some of the species we found. A comparison of the two lists helped generate questions, which can be found on page 100. Documenting and collecting species in these habitats at Tillinghast Place also allowed us to add new data about plant species growth to the CNH, which can aid future inquiry into plant diversity studies.
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Additional Notes
• Any species 1) found on Go Botany but not in the CNH, or 2) found in the CNH with direct documentation about the three habitats but not listed in Go Botany, have been marked in the comprehensive list with an asterisk. • Orchids able to grow in salt marsh, dune, and/or coastal beach habitats in Rhode Island were not included in the comprehensive list because most of the documented species of orchids in the CNH contain a label indicating that the specificities of the location cannot be divulged in order to protect the species. Additionally, the rarity of an orchid species growing in a salt marsh and/or dune habitat renders the inclusion of orchid species as insignificant to the comprehensive list.
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