Research Insights
Building Gullah Geechee Resilience to Climate Change Through Spaces of Abundance in the Salt Marsh of Sapelo Island
Writers, poets and scientists have long tried to capture the mystery and magic of salt marshes. At the same time, interconnected social and ecological processes, including sea level rise and land loss, are dynamically transforming land-use for vulnerable coastal communities and habitat for coastal environments. Marsh landscapes have long been an unrecognized source of producing world views based in notions of abundance for Gullah Geechee communities. Documenting culturally important sites through human scale photography that have long sustained and generated deep ecological knowledge for Gullah Geechee communities can strengthen resiliency planning for many so-called marginal communities. This project will be based in Sapelo Island’s Hogg Hummock Community—the last intact Geechee Gullah community on the Georgia Sea Islands— and done in partnership with Save Our Legacy Ourself (SOLO), a Saltwater Geechee non-profit organization located in that community.
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Amount: $150,000
PI: Nik Heynan, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Departments of Geography and Anthropology