“I am Sapelo”: Racialized uneven development and land politics within the Gullah Geechee Corridor

The history of land struggles in the United States demonstrates how ongoing patterns of uneven development depend upon and codify the legacies of white supremacy. In this article, we show how the histories of white supremacy continue to be embedded and institutionalized into contemporary land and property politics through the processes of racialized uneven development using the case of Sapelo Island, Georgia. We trace the history of property relations on Sapelo over four periods (covering 1802–2020) to reveal how Black, Saltwater Geechee descendants’ presence on the island has persisted despite manifold attempts to manipulate, control, and dispossess families of their land. We re-interpret Sapelo’s history through the lens of abolition ecology to articulate how the struggle for life through land consistently runs up against state-sanctioned racial violence, which perpetuates and institutionalizes systemic racialized uneven development. We argue that the “racial state” is facilitating the dispossession of Geechee cultural heritage, which lies in having access to and ownership of the land and requires new political imaginaries to combat the persistence of these tactics.

Mycorrhizae Quantification in Sapelo Island Sand Dunes

Mycorrhizae have played a vital role in plant growth for over millions of years. This fungus forms a symbiotic relationship with the plant roots that stimulate plant growth and root development. This symbiotic relationship suffers in ecosystems, which have been disturbed by human activity resulting in a decline of mycorrhizae. Many journals have been published in accordance to mycorrhizae research, but a knowledge gap has been formed due to the lack of publishing in the 21st century. In the present article, the researcher develop an approach to further understand the concentration of mycorrhizae throughout a sand dune and what effect that has on the community. The motivation behind this research is to gain a better understanding of mycorrhizae’s relative importance in coastal dune systems, especially their role in helping these systems recover from disturbances, such as hurricanes. This review studies closely the quantification of mycorrhizal infection in Sea Oat (Uniola paniculate) and Spartina alterniflora (cord grass) plants found in sand dunes on Sapelo Island, Georgia. This study focuses on two types of plants, with 30 plots from three different sections of the sand dune; beachfront, midlevel, and upper level in the presence of wrack. All roots went through a staining process in the lab in order to visually quantify amounts of vesicles, arbuscules and hyphae. From laboratory observation it is evident there are high levels of infection throughout the plots. Thus, this particular sand dune has relatively healthy plants with high nutrient and water availability despite being exposed to hurricanes.

Coastal Ocean Metagenomes and Curated Metagenome-Assembled Genomes from Marsh Landing, Sapelo Island (Georgia, USA)

Microbes play a dominant role in the biogeochemistry of coastal waters, which receive organic matter from diverse sources. We present metagenomes and 45 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from Sapelo Island, Georgia, to further understand coastal microbial populations.

The Effects of Selected Heavy Metal Elements (arsenic, Cadmium, Nickel, Zinc) On Experimentally Grown Foraminiferal Assemblages from Sapelo Island, Georgia and Little Duck Key, Florida, U.S.A.

Benthic foraminifera are valuable environmental indicators of heavy metal contaminants in marine environments. To broaden their effectiveness as bioindicators, this study compares individually the effects of selected heavy metal contaminants, including both metabolically essential and non-essential elements, on temperate rotalids and subtropical miliolids, as well as associated monothalamid foraminifera. To accomplish these aims, assemblages of foraminifera were grown experimentally from propagules (small juveniles) collected from two coastal sites: Sapelo Island, Georgia, and Little Duck Key, Florida, that provide an effective comparison between environments and types of foraminifera. Surface sediment was collected from both locations and sieved immediately after collection. Using the propagule method, assemblages of foraminifera were grown in the laboratory from propagules in the sediment samples. Two metabolically essential trace elements, nickel, and zinc, and two non-essential elements, arsenic and cadmium were used to represent both types of heavy metal. Experimental conditions were held constant while varying only the metal concentrations. In treatments from both origins, increasing concentrations of cadmium, nickel, and zinc led to decreases in abundance and diversity for the foraminifera. In addition, zinc, and to a lesser extent cadmium and nickel above certain concentrations, resulted in an increase of deformed tests among the foraminifera. Deformities occurred amongst the most common calcareous species from Sapelo island: Ammonia tepida and Haynesina germanica. Fewer deformities were observed in common calcareous species from Little Duck Key, the miliolids Quinqueloculina sabulosa and Quinqueloculina bosciana featured few deformities. Notably, monothalamid species such as Psammophaga sapela remained present at high metal concentrations. These results support previous research and reinforce the usefulness of rotalids such as A. tepida and H. germanica as bioindicators of heavy metal contamination as well as suggesting a possible use of monothalamids such as P. sapela in this manner.