IT IS HARD TO THINK of a tidal marsh as being in danger of sea level rise. After all, it is already surrounded by water. But a tidal marsh — like the 100-acre wetland at China Camp State Park in southern Marin County — is essentially a water garden that depends on sunlight and shallow shores. Its grasses shelter unique fish that feed birds and special status species like the salt marsh harvest mouse and golden eagles.

As seas rise, marshes can drown and become open water, wiping out entire ecosystems that people and animals depend on unless they are replenished with new sediment.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.