Grand Bay, located in the Mississippi Sound, where wet pine savannas, woodlands, and salt and freshwater marshes have undergone significant disturbance cycles that have shaped its landscape aesthetic. The Escatawpa River’s change of course and the interruption of flooding by the railroad and US-90 have led to ecological disconnections. Currently, Grand Bay faces challenges such as a lack of sediments and nutrients, sea level rise, and marsh recession, contributing to the potential emergence of a ghost forest landscape in the next 100 years.
Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) is addressing these issues through research and community outreach, focusing on the restoration of wet pine savannas and the study of marsh habitat. Their efforts include using fire disturbances to foster a healthy ecosystem that supports wildflowers, native species, and migratory birds. The openness of the landscape enables sediments to reach the marshes and allows marshes to recess when sea level rises.
After visiting Grand Bay and its surrounding neighborhoods of Pascagoula and Moss Point, I noticed a lack of infrastructure and access to Mississippi Sound. In conversations with the community, many were unaware of the constant disturbance cycles that shape the landscape, highlighting a disconnection between the community and the landscape. Discussions with researchers from the NERR made me realize that manual labor is essential to foster research and management achieving a healthier landscape. By engaging the community in hands-on activities as recreational opportunities, residents can get involved and play a role in shaping and experiencing the evolving landscape that surrounds them.
Therefore, the Recreational Learning Experience project emerges to improve community stewardship and involvement in Grand Bay. To build a sense of community through recreational activities based on maintenance and disturbance practices. Rather than focusing on a final design, the project evolves over time, empowering the community to actively engage with the landscape through the use of field guides and artifacts. It encourages an understanding that space is a choreography between succession and disturbance, that emerges and dissipates, where the landscape’s aesthetic becomes a temporal perception.
Recreational Learning Experience fosters community involvement in two different site conditions at the NERR’s entrance and on the Pine Island. Where the role of amateur enthusiasts and research experts from the NERR are key for the future development and success of the project. More involvement of the community will result in an expansion of landscape research and management, where amateur enthusiasts will become research experts who will gather high-quality data for informed decision-making and future planning in the landscape while enjoying access to recreational opportunities.
The goal of Recreational Learning Experience is to encourage designers to have a different approach to landscape. Demonstrating that a project doesn’t need to have a final design, but one that envisions an evolution fostered by community stewardship, where residents relate to their surrounding environment, manage the landscape, and have recreational learning experiences. Acknowledging that space is a temporal perception given by the choreography of time and space.
Recreational Learning Experience
Student Name: Jaime Andres Andrade Constante
University: Auburn University
Supervisor: Rob Holmes and Isaac Cohen