LSU CC&E Professor Awarded at 13th International Symposium on Biogeochemistry of Wetlands, Students Present Research

BATON ROUGE — On March 22-25, the LSU Wetland and Aquatic Biogeochemical Laboratory, or WABL, housed within the LSU College of the Coast & Environment, or CC&E, hosted and sponsored the 13th International Symposium on Biogeochemistry of Wetlands. This virtual scientific symposium was designed to bring together stakeholders who are actively engaged in applying principles of biogeochemistry to solving environmental and social problems. John R. White, associate dean of research for CC&E and director of WABL, served as this year’s conference chair.

More than 150 people from 15 countries, 23 states, and 78 organizations attended this year’s symposium. This included 29 students (4 undergraduates, 11 graduate students, and 13 doctoral students). Over the course of four days, they participated in four special plenary keynotes, 90 oral presentations, and 15 poster presentations.

The poster session held on March 24 included presentations from CC&E students Jacob Cheng (“Areal Denitrification Rates in Created v.s. Natural Coastal Marshes: Implications for River Reconnection”) and Le Zhang (“Marsh Growth Dynamics Modeling on an Expanding Delta Using the Coupled Wave-Flow-Sediment Transport Model (COAWST)”).

On the last day of the conference, Robert Twilley, executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and professor in the LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences, was presented with the third annual Golden Cattail Award, which honors individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the study of wetland biogeochemistry.

“Dr. Twilley is a titan in his field. He continually engages decision makers at all levels in order to ensure they have the very best science available to them when making informed choices for management of these vital coastal systems. We are proud to honor his nearly 40-year career with the Golden Cattail Award in Recognition of Exceptional Contributions to Advancing Knowledge in Wetland Biogeochemistry,” White said.

Twilley is a leading national expert in coastal deltaic science and sustainability. He has worked on some of the largest ecosystem restoration efforts in the world including the Mississippi River Delta, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Florida Everglades. In addition, he has worked on mangrove conservation and restoration throughout the neotropics of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico. He has published extensively on wetland ecology and global climate change, and he has been involved in developing ecosystem models coupled with engineering designs to forecast the rehabilitation of coastal and wetland ecosystems.

CC&E and WABL are proud to have supported this year’s symposium as a gold sponsor and a silver sponsor, respectively, and to further the conference’s goal to improve our understanding of the role wetlands perform in regulating and mitigating impacts of global climate change and sea level rise.

In 1991, the late Bill Patrick organized the first International Symposium on Biogeochemistry of Wetlands in Baton Rouge. Patrick was a distinguished LSU Boyd Professor and former professor in the LSU Department of Marine Sciences, which would later become the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences. Since then, the symposium has been held annually all across the globe in places such as Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Maryland, England, and Belgium.