Contact: Jim Laird
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The National Science Foundation is awarding a Mississippi State assistant professor almost $200,000 in rapid response grant funding to study the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impact on Louisiana salt marshes.
A member of the land-grant institution's department of geosciences faculty since August 2009, Deepak Mishra's project is assessing overall salt marsh health and productivity by comparing pre- and post-spill satellite images.
According to Mishra, the maps and tools developed during the one-year study will aid coastal managers in Louisiana as they evaluate and prioritize the large-scale marsh restoration effort taking shape as part of the oil spill response.
"Our goal in the proposal is to use satellite images to identify the 'hotspots' of early marsh degradation associated with oiling. This degradation will be delineated by evaluating several wetland health indicators including distribution of chlorophyll pigments, biomass and green vegetation fraction - green marsh vs. brown marsh," he said.
According to Mishra, assessment of marsh health and productivity is essential to the evaluation of the short-term impact of the spill and for the prioritization of future restoration actions.
Mishra grew up in a small coastal town in eastern India, and his upbringing played an important role in shaping his research interests, even as he completed his doctorate in the land-locked Midwest at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After a year as a research assistant professor at Nebraska, he moved south to the University of New Orleans.
"At UNO, I was introduced to some of the dominant environmental problems in the Gulf, including wetland loss, hypoxia and harmful algae blooms. Within a few months, I was heavily involved in those research areas and started writing grant proposals with new ideas and innovative solutions," Mishra explained.
Research taking place in Mississippi State's geosciences department and Geosystems Research Institute drew Mishra to Starkville about a year ago.
"As a remote sensing scientist, I was very interested in coming to Mississippi State," he said. "The wide variety of remote sensing research that goes on in geosciences and at GRI is impressive, and there are plenty of opportunities to collaborate with other geospatial scientists."