News > February 7, 2008

By Maya Yette | Staff writer

The National Science Foundation has awarded William K. Smith, university professor and Charles H. Babcock Chair of Botany, along with two colleagues, a five year $477,000 grant to create the Coastal Barrier Island Network.

Smith is working on the project with Rusty Feagin, assistant professor with the Spatial Sciences Laboratory at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Texas A&M University and Nancy Jackson, professor of chemistry and environmental science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

“Obviously we’re delighted,” said Smith.

“The National Science Foundation is the most competitive agency you can apply to in most of the basic sciences and it is five years of funding.

“That’s very exciting because you feel like you have enough time to get something done,” he said. Most grants are only two years.

The Coastal Barrier Island Network, formerly called BINET, will look at the environmental problems barrier islands are facing and try to “evaluate what is going to happen to these islands in the future, what’s beginning to happen, how we can develop a strategy for sustaining these islands, and all the advantages of having them,” Smith said.

The Coastal Barrier Island Network primarily focuses on the east gulf coast.

For example, South Padre Island is a barrier island.

One issue the Coastal Barrier Island Network is examining is how to protect barrier islands against storms, as large storms can do significant damage to the islands, especially over a long period of time.

One of the proposals is that native vegetation can be used more efficiently

“Barrier islands survive much better when they have the maritime forest already in tact,” said Smith.

“Houses will provide structure. However, they are very expensive storm breaks, so we think there’s a possibility instead of building dikes or dredgers, where the native vegetation really plays a vital role in stabilizing islands.”

With the grant money from the National Science Foundation, the Coastal Barrier Island Network will be able bring together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers.

There is money for annual meetings and workshops. Also, money will go towards summer courses for students on the topic of sustaining barrier islands in the future from all those different perspectives including economics and hydrology.

“Ultimately the purpose is to develop a strategic plan on how to sustain these ecosystems in the future, if it’s possible, even,” said Smith.

CBIN will also be able to identify research areas that may be lacking and need to be researched more in depth.

The barrier islands are considered important from a lot of different perspectives.

They are important biologically, ecologically, economically and even culturally.

Also, they have tremendous economic impacts as well as ecosystem impacts.

“They are very, very important features of the landscape and if, for example, we were to lose all the barrier islands the coastal situation would change in areas from social economics to aesthetics to commercial development,” said Smith.

“None of the coastline would be what it is today in any sense of the word.”

Smith and his colleagues began the National Science Foundation grant application process about six months ago.

However, the idea of applying for the grant is much older. The idea for the grant proposal sprung out of a workshop Smith hosted in 2006 that met in Gulfport, Miss. following Hurricane Katrina.

The National Science Foundation also funded this workshop, but it was on a much smaller scale with about $20,000. Smith invited people from many other disciplines who were all involved in barrier islands in some way to this workshop.

“That’s how things got off the ground was this workshop, then we decided what kind of effort was needed to really get this going and talked about writing a grant. We even put together a manuscript which is currently being reviewed,” said Smith.