Southampton Institute graduate Michelle (who is known as 'Shelley') Hodge has won this year's Solent Forum Undergraduate Dissertation Prize. The Solent Forum is a regional coastal body, established in 1992, to improve the management of the Solent and its coastline.
Shelley, 31 from St Ives in Cornwall, graduated last year with a first class BSc (Hons) Coastal Conservation and Management degree and sees the award, which is open to all university projects based on the Solent, as further recognition of her experience with the Institute's Faculty of Technology.
The project entitled 'An Evaluation of the Practical Opportunities for Managed Retreat/Realignment to achieve Compensatory Saltmarsh Habitat in the Solent' adopted constraint mapping techniques to show that opportunities for saltmarsh re-creation within the Solent are very limited. Given the current rates of erosion, relative sea-level rise and the legal obligation to conserve this habitat the results highlight the seriousness of problems facing local coastal managers.
It was felt that Shelley's dissertation was a particularly relevant to the Solent Forum research agenda and produced high quality conclusions, many of which are being followed up.
Shelley comments: "I am thrilled to win the prize and find it extremely rewarding that my work has been both recognised and acknowledged.
"Winning the Solent Forum Dissertation Prize reflects the contemporary approach to study adopted by the Institute through the project's immediate relevance and usefulness to coastal managers throughout the Solent. I wanted to produce a 'working document', so to speak, which was topical and could be taken forward, making a valuable contribution to future decisions on habitat re-creation in the Solent."
Professor David Johnson, Head of the Maritime subject group at Southampton Institute who supervised the work and nominated Shelley for the prize, holds her work in high regard. He explains:
"In my opinion this is an outstanding project that has been both well conceived and executed. The conclusions formed take this topic forward and the whole dissertation is excellently presented and referenced."
Shelley and David intend to publish the work within a forthcoming special edition of the journal Marine Policy.
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