The Editor's Pick: Yellow Bay Island

I discovered this excellent blog while collecting data for my first and forthcoming guest-editors' project. I am currently working on a project series; Guest-editors will be invited to explore topics on infrastructure in this new era. I will announce a call for submissions on September — certainly the end of September. So more soon. This aside…
This infographic is part of this interesting post named Yellow Bar Island - Dredge Reuse and FAA Permitting. This is the result of a visit of Yellow Bar Island in Jamaica Bay conducted, this July, by The Dredge Research Collaborative. The goal to this visit was to document progress on the Army Corps of Engineers project that aims to restore eroding salt marsh habitat with recycled dredge material.

Dredge Reuse and FAA Permitting | The Dredge Research Collaborative
Originally appeared on PLOTS

Gwirth describes this maps as follows:

Visible in these images is the flat expanse of newly constructed ground, composed of clean sand dredged from the Ambrose Channel, the main shipping channel leading to the port of NY/NJ. 

Salt Marsh Cordgrass, (like Spartina patens) is seen here in pixellated form, as small, approx 2'-5' diameter hummocks of preexisting marsh. These green clumps are a complex marsh matrix of sediment, Spartina, and ribbed mussel, which in a functional ecosystem colonize the base of the cordgrass and staibilize the marshland. Past the dotted fringe of cordgrass clumps is the expansive island interior, touched in a more economical fashion with a grid of fences marking Spartina plug planting zones. We speculate that the fence grid acts as a goose deterrent, preventing flocks from landing and feasting on the newly planted plugs 

Also pictured at left is the constructed island-on-a-constructed-island used by the Army Corps for material and equipment storage, located just above the high tide line.

In a paper named Army Corps awards contracts for restoration of Yellow Bar Hassock Marsh Island in Jamaica Bay, N.Y that was included in Gwirth's post, I found this interesting information:

Restoring salt marshes and coastal wetlands in Jamaica Bay are a critical component of the Comprehensive Restoration for the Hudson Raritan Estuary. The marsh islands ecosystem within Jamaica Bay is a home for a variety of wildlife. 

It is estimated that approximately 1,400 acres of tidal salt marsh have been lost from the marsh islands since 1924, with the system wide rate of loss rapidly increasing in recent years.

This September (Friday 28 and Saturday 29 September), Dredge Research Collaborative and Studio-X NYC will conduct a symposium named DredgeFest. This symposium will explore NYC's human acceleration of sediment, and the technologies and techniques that have been invented. Broadly speaking, as Dredge Research Collaborative writes, dredging plays a key role in global shipping networks, and in coastal real estate as well as in a wider cycle of linked activities through which humans act as intentional and unintentional geologic agents, accelerating and decelerating the movement of silts, sands, and clays.
Saturday 29 September (that follows the symposium) a Harbor Tour will be organized with Jamaica Bay included. A great occasion for having a real understanding in situ (albeit this map may help to have a good understanding of this area's issues, too — in particular for those who cannot attend this symposium).

Source: PLOTS, Dredge Research Collaborative