Featured Projects
Restoration of Windswept Bog, a retired cranberry Bog, to functional wetland status will provide large scale ecological benefits. This project provides opportunities for research, education, and deeper understanding of wetland and upland habitat restoration at former cranberry bog sites. Phase 1 of construction for this project took place in January-March 2024. Phase 2 (the final phase) began in November 2024 and will wrap up by the end of March 2025.
This project involves development of a standardized monitoring plan for physical, chemical, and biological monitoring of cranberry bog wetland restoration projects in DER’s Cranberry Bog Program.
Completed in 2016, the 225-acre Tidmarsh Farms/Beaver Dam Brook wetland and river restoration project in Plymouth, was the second wetland restoration of cranberry farmland in Massachusetts and, at the time, the largest wetland restoration in New England. At the time, Tidmarsh Farms was a 610 acre cranberry farm owned by the Schulman family and managed by Tidmarsh Farms Management. In 2010 placed a perpetual USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) conservation and wetland restoration easement on the eastern portion of the Farms and kickstarted the restoration process. Target conditions for the project included a mosaic of wetland habitat types, free movement of fish from ocean to headwaters, and restored connectivity with surrounding forests. The project became a Ma Fish and Wildlife Division of Ecological Restoration (DER) priority project in 2011. Funders of the project included American Rivers, the Massachusetts Environmental Trust (MET), DER, NOAA, Living Observatory (LO), and DOI/USFWS with the award of a National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant.
The eastern portion of the Farms was purchased by Mass Audubon in 2017, the site is now part of the Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary.
This project seeks to better understand the sources and movement of nitrogen in wetlands. We are primarily interested in how much nitrogen is delivered to wetlands and how much nitrogen is potentially removed by ecological restoration of wetlands. We use a combination of field measurements and computer modeling to answer these questions.