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A new University of Georgia College of Engineering pilot study partnered with The Nature Conservancy to explore funding salt water preservation and recovery, according to a press release from the colleges website.

The study is funded by the Georgia Sea Grant and will delve into determining the socioeconomic value of salt marsh ecosystems in Georgia, the release said.

According to The Environmental Protection Agency, salt marshes are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate change. Warming water temperatures and rising sea levels will have the greatest impact on these coastal ecosystems.

These marshes are among the most well-preserved and extensive natural coastal networks in the nation, playing an indispensable role within human communities and for wildlife, said Matthew Bilskie, an assistant professor in the School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering, in an excerpt from the release.

Bilskie will lead UGA Coastal Ocean Analysis and Simulation Team (COAST), a research group with expertise in computational modeling of coastal and estuarine systems, the release said.

The group will analyze how natural disasters such as hurricanes may affect salt marshes and the data will be passed along to Yukiko Hashida, an assistant professor of agriculture and applied economics in UGAs College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, who will then determine if the projections can be monetized.

The partnership with The Nature Conservancy will allow community stakeholders into the study to find ways to finance the protection of the salt marshes, the release said. Ideally, this analysis of the marshes and their benefits will yield insurance as a viable option for protecting the marshes in the future.

If the pilot succeeds, this type of business and environmental collaboration could potentially be replicated across the South Atlantic, said Ashby Worley, TNCs coastal climate adaptation director in Georgia in the release.

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UGA Engineering study funds salt water preservation, recovery - Red and Black