The purpose of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation study is to help assess the success of marsh restorations made in the region after Hurricane Sandy, the most deadly and destructive hurricane of 2012. The instrumentation was specifically installed at Thompson Beach marsh complex located in the Heislerville Wildlife Management Area inside Delaware Bay, and a coastal back-barrier marsh in the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary located between the Atlantic Ocean and the intercoastal waterway. The instruments are collecting water quality and hydrodynamic data. Over the next year, six visits will be made to refresh the instrumentation and collect supplemental data (e.g., water samples for lab analysis). These site visits are set for late June, early August, early October, and early December of 2022. 

The group is also planning to collect Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements across the marsh channel at the Thompson Beach marsh complex to calculate water discharge, which will be used to calculate sediment flux. 

This will be the second year of data collection at these sites, the first took place from 2018-2019. Results of this study will be used to calculate sustainability metrics of these marshes and will be entered into a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation database for coastal wetland systems and released in a USGS data report.