Sediment success – our expanding mangrove forests

With World Wetland Day next Monday, celebrate the most successful of New Zealand wetland types – the mangrove. While we’ve lost 90 percent of our swamps and bogs, the area covered by our only salt water tree has been expanding, driving many bach owners and other recreational beach users crazy. The University of Waikato’s Associate Professor Karin Bryan and co-principal investigator Dr Julia Mullarney have a new Marsden grant investigating how the trees’ unique peg roots help sediment settle in. She reports from the waist-deep mud of the Firth of Thames.