On Tuesday members of the Hays Inlet Green Army team, downed their weeding tools and paid a visit to the Bremner Road Saltmarsh Reserve. This site is the focus of a long term community science project on monitoring saltmarsh habitat. This type of habitat is listed as endangered in South East Queensland mainly due to the impact of urban and industrial development. This wetland habitat is also very sensitive to traffic mainly from recreational four wheel drive vehicles and motorbikes.
The site is now a reserve and since fencing has excluded the majority of vehicles the area is slowly recovering. The Green army team got stuck into helping with the vegetation monitoring with the guidance of scientist and saltmarsh expert, Jock Mackenzie (Mangrove Watch) and pictured in the centre of the image above along with Cheryl Bolzenius from WetlandCare Australia. Apart from monitoring the health and cover of saltmarsh vegetation the team also got involved with the gastropod snail monitoring program.
Tracking the abundance, location and health of gastropods is another way of monitoring the ecological health of the system. Scientists often use invertebrate species to track the health and recovery of habitats and in saltmarsh areas they have often used gastropods in monitoring programs.
So after a morning of setting up transects and grids for digital recording the Green Army team got on the ground (literally on their hands and knees) to mine for gastropods. They sampled the different saltmarsh vegetation areas for gastropods in order to identify and record their numbers so scientists can interpret the data and gain a better understanding of how the precious saltmarsh habitat is recovering.
The site is now a reserve and since fencing has excluded the majority of vehicles the area is slowly recovering. The Green army team got stuck into helping with the vegetation monitoring with the guidance of scientist and saltmarsh expert, Jock Mackenzie (Mangrove Watch) and pictured in the centre of the image above along with Cheryl Bolzenius from WetlandCare Australia. Apart from monitoring the health and cover of saltmarsh vegetation the team also got involved with the gastropod snail monitoring program.
Tracking the abundance, location and health of gastropods is another way of monitoring the ecological health of the system. Scientists often use invertebrate species to track the health and recovery of habitats and in saltmarsh areas they have often used gastropods in monitoring programs.
So after a morning of setting up transects and grids for digital recording the Green Army team got on the ground (literally on their hands and knees) to mine for gastropods. They sampled the different saltmarsh vegetation areas for gastropods in order to identify and record their numbers so scientists can interpret the data and gain a better understanding of how the precious saltmarsh habitat is recovering.
If you would like to know more about saltmarsh habitat ecology and gastropods you can go to our site at http://saltmarsh.enviroed.com.au/Welcome.aspx
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