Salt marshes, often overlooked, provide critical ecosystem services to coastal communities. They protect against damaging storm surge by attenuating waves, and they guard against algal blooms and oxygen depletion by intercepting watershed nitrogen before it can prompt eutrophication in coastal waters. In recent decades, numerous anthropogenic sources have increased nitrogen inputs to these salt marsh ecosystems. Yet, many of the effects of these nitrogen inputs on the carbon and nitrogen cycles, as well as the ecosystem’s resilience to sea level rise, remain unknown. To study the effects of these anthropogenic changes, the Bowen Lab and the Hughes Lab, at Northeastern University’s Coastal Sustainability Institute, have just received an NSF grant to research the effects of nitrogen in various forms on salt marsh ecosystems.