Media Category: VCR

Members of the VIMS Coastal Geology Lab and collaborators collecting a sediment core at VCR. Cores were up to 19 meters in depth.

Barksdale collecting subsamples from a sediment core. The thickness and carbon densities of the lagoon sediments in these cores greatly exceeded what had previously been assumed.

Sediment erosion along the beach of Cedar Island, one of the barrier islands within the VCR.. Over the last 30 years, the rate of erosion has exceeded the rate of accumulation.

Virginia Barrier Islands protecting coastal salt marshes and lagoons.

“Passage” by Paul Leoni.
The evening in the Virginia Coast Reserve brings stillness and serenity in a landscape defined by the constant ebb and flow of water.

“Plank to Plank” by Paul Leoni.
A dock at sunset in the Virginia Coast Reserve.

“The Claw” by Paul Leoni.
Fiddler crabs are charismatic crustaceans that burrow tunnels and aerate salt marsh soil.

“On the Shore of Salty Soil and Rising Seas” by Paul Leoni.
The Agroecology Lab surveys a tidal marsh in the Virginia Coast Reserve, where sea level rise exceeds the global average.

“Through the Phragmites” by Paul Leoni.

Phragmites australis, the common invasive reed in the Virginia Coast Reserve, a plant that can outcompete native plant species in salt marshes.

Oyster reefs, like this one at the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER, were harvested sustainably by ancestral Muskogean peoples for thousands of years in the archaic period (around 4,000 years ago).