Category Archives: Uncategorized

We have a project looking at salt-marsh trangression and some of our site locations are composed of wide fringing salt marsh; difficult to access.  Our new favorite coring device is the backpack vibracorer.  I don’t think we could have collected … Continue reading →

The past two days we have been field tripping with Chuck Nittrouer’s class from the University of Washington.  They are a great group of students, post-docs and visiting professors all smart, personable, and fun to be around.  Emily Eidam, Nittrouer … Continue reading →

It’s been a fun spring semester.  Brent McKee and I have been leading two seminar classes at Chapel Hill.  One looks at sediment accretion in North American estuaries across the Anthropocene and the other is more broad, titled Frontiers in … Continue reading →

We don’t have an official Coastal Geology Club at IMS, but during our open house in Oct. 2017 there was a lot of interest in starting one.  People from all over eastern Morehead City were enthusiastic about making ID cards and … Continue reading →

Methods, methods, methods was the key focus this summer for my project. My project aims to understand how different salt marsh – upland morphologies affect salt marsh transgression (landward movement) with physical factors like increasing rates sea-level rise and frequency … Continue reading →

Welcome Carson Miller, Molly Bost and Jessie Straub.  The Rodriguez Lab is not new to Carson and Molly, but Jessie comes from Coastal Carolina University, and it took her about 10 minutes to settle in and feel like a lab mate. … Continue reading →

Oyster reefs are often the only natural hard substrate in estuaries and are even labeled “oyster rock” on many old nautical charts.  Oyster reefs have the potential to grow extremely rapidly (10 cm/year); in comparison, coral-reef growth, is measured in mm/year. … Continue reading →

Oyster reefs are similar to other carbonate depositional environment such as coral reefs.  The largest difference is that oyster reefs are located in estuaries and sediment loading from external sources, like rivers and shoreline erosion, is much higher than what corals experience.  Being filter … Continue reading →

During large storms, barrier islands are temporarily underwater because of storm surge and high waves.  This is called overwash, and during overwash sand is moved from the beach and deposited in back-barrier environments.  The sandy deposit that forms as a result of overwash … Continue reading →

A bit of what we have been up to the past six months in photos.  We also worked inside many days, teaching classes and writing papers and proposals. It hasn’t been all fun and games, though.  A horrible summer in terms of … Continue reading →