Contact: Bob Ratliff
When a group of Mississippi State students recently hit the beach in Biloxi, it wasn't for a spring break fling.
Thirty of the university's landscape architecture majors traveled to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to create a three-acre salt marsh across U.S. Highway 90 from Biloxi's Miramar Park. When the work was complete, they had set out 6,000 plants along what had been an empty stretch of white sand and water.
"The class planted 11 cabbage palms on the beach and black needle rush and smooth cord grass in the water," said landscape architecture professor Pete Melby. "They also installed bitter panic grass and salt marsh hay on a 600-foot-long spit of sand that juts out from the beach to protect the newly created marsh."
The plants, which are native to the Gulf Coast, had been donated by Northrop Grumman Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula. They were harvested from a saltwater marsh that is to be filled as part of a company expansion project.
"The native specimens have larger root masses and will work much better than commercially grown grasses in protecting the beach from erosion," Melby said.
In addition to support from Ingalls, project sponsors included the Biloxi Bay Chamber of Commerce, the city's sand beach department and the Alabama/Mississippi Sea Grant Consortium.
The Miramar Park-area project was not the first time MSU landscape architecture majors have been involved in a coastal improvement effort.
Several years ago, Melby's students were invited by the chamber to assist in beautifying the appearance of the Highway 90 median. After examining the situation, the MSU team recommended an expansion of the community organization's beautification effort to include the adjoining beach area, said Biloxi Bay vice president Judy Steckler.
"Some of the students drove along the beach from the Ocean Springs bridge to the Bay St. Louis bridge," she said. "They said its boring when you drive 26 miles and see only beach sand."
Melby said that while the recently planted grass and trees will have aesthetic value, this project is designed to do more than improve the scenic view for Highway 90 travelers.
"The plants in the marsh are taking toxins and pollutants out of runoff water," he explained. "As a result, this area can serve as a blueprint for creating better water quality in the Gulf of Mexico."
The grasses also help prevent beach erosion, which can save millions of dollars in renourishment projects, he added.
For additional information on the coast project, contact Melby at (662) 325-3012 or pm@ra.msstate.edu.