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Salt Marsh Resilience and Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise and Other Environmental Impacts
Published in Brian D. Fath, Sven E. Jørgensen, Megan Cole, Managing Water Resources and Hydrological Systems, 2020
Salt marshes are coastal wetlands within the intertidal zone, characterized by highly saline soils and anoxic conditions associated with tidal flooding and vegetated by macrophytes. Salt marshes occur globally along the low-energy depositional coasts of temporal and sub-Arctic climates both in microtidal and macrotidal regimes (Allen and Pye, 1992). Commonly, salt marshes occupy broad flat areas often referred to as the marsh platform. At the landform scale, salt marshes classify based on the physical settings that include open-coast marshes, poorly developed and vulnerable to wave action (Figure 1a); back-barrier marshes that formed on the sheltered side of barrier islands or spits (Figure 1b and f); estuarine marshes that fringe estuaries and coastal lagoons where muddy sediments accumulate (Figure 1e); embayment marshes that fringe the edge of open or restricted-entrance tidal embayment (Figure 1c and d); ria/loch-head marsh, occurring mostly in Europe (Brittany, Ireland and Scotland) (Figure 1g). Salt marshes can also develop where a gently shelving coast is combined with a high concentration of suspended sediment, such as the chenier plain (Rogers and Woodroffe, 2014).
Blue Carbon as a Tool to Support Coastal Management and Restoration
Published in Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Stephen Crooks, Tiffany G. Troxler, A Blue Carbon Primer, 2018
Tonna-Marie Surgeon Rogers, Kevin D. Kroeger, Meagan Eagle Gonneea, Omar Abdul-Aziz, Jianwu Tang, Serena Moseman-Valtierra
Seven key facts provided the impetus for initiating BWM: (i) salt marshes have tremendous value to society because of the suite of important ecosystem services that they provide, including carbon storage; (ii) globally and nationally coastal wetlands, and their carbon stores, are threatened by a number of factors such as development and sea level rise, and these ecosystems are being destroyed and/or degraded at an alarming rate; (iii) lack of adequate funding is limiting our ability to keep pace with restoration goals for coastal wetlands; (iv) carbon markets could serve as an important mechanism to secure resources for wetlands restoration, however, absence of a greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol to enable coastal wetlands to be considered in carbon markets (similar to what exists for forests) was a critical barrier; (v) additional research is needed to better understand the behavior and critical environmental drivers of GHGs and carbon storage in coastal wetlands; (vi) there is both a need and an opportunity to build awareness about the importance of coastal blue carbon and its climate mitigation benefits, as well as develop information and tools to enable managers and policymakers to use blue carbon to advance coastal protection and restoration, and (vii) local decision makers working in Massachusetts, where the study was conducted, were particularly concerned about the impact of anthropogenic nitrogen loading on water quality and coastal wetland health. Examining the impact of nitrogen loading was therefore included as a BWM objective to increase the project’s relevance to the local community.
Land
Published in Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser, Sustainability and the Rights of Nature, 2017
Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser
Tidal wetlands (also called tidal flats or salt marshes) are closely linked to our nation’s estuaries where seawater mixes with freshwater to form an environment of varying salinities. The tidal action combines the saltwater and fluctuating water levels to create a rather difficult environment for most plants. Consequently, many shallow coastal areas are mudflats or sand flats devoid of vegetation. Nevertheless, certain grasses and grass-like plants have successfully adapted to these saline conditions and form the tidal salt marshes found along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts. In addition, mangrove swamps, with salt-loving shrubs or trees, are common in tropical climates, such as those found in southern Florida and Puerto Rico.140
Quantifying blue carbon for the largest salt marsh in southern British Columbia: implications for regional coastal management
Published in Coastal Engineering Journal, 2021
Maija Gailis, Karen Elizabeth Kohfeld, Marlow G. Pellatt, Deborah Carlson
Salt marshes are intertidal ecosystems found on sheltered marine coastlines that can sequester large amounts of “blue carbon” in their soils, relative to their small areal extent (Chmura et al. 2003; Bridgham et al. 2006; Drake et al. 2015). Their effective carbon sequestering abilities are primarily due their high primary productivity, ongoing sediment deposition, ongoing burial of autochthonous vegetation (litter and roots), and relatively low decomposition rates (Callaway et al. 2012; Drake et al. 2015). Due to the vertical sediment accretion in response to rising sea level, carbon stocks and accumulation rates may increase over time (Stagg et al. 2016). Furthermore, polyhaline (salinity >18) tidal marshes have been shown to have negligible methane emissions (Poffenbarger, Needelman, and Megonigal 2011). Seawater contains sulfate ions which undergo sulfate reduction and outcompete methanogenesis in soil, thus limiting methane production (Kroeger et al. 2017). As a result, polyhaline marshes can become net carbon sinks that can help mitigate climate change.
Identifying marsh dieback events from Landsat image series (1998–2018) with an Autoencoder in the NIWB estuary, South Carolina
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2020
Huixuan Li, Cuizhen Wang, Jean T. Ellis, Yuxin Cui, Gwen Miller, James T. Morris
Salt marshes grow in the intertidal zone between land and sea and are dominated with salt-tolerant grasses, herbs, and low shrubs (Adam 1990). The significance of marsh habitat to natural and human environments has been widely recognized in aspects such as reducing shoreline erosion, filtering urban runoff and allowing for sediment deposition (Reed, de Luca, and Foote 1997), purifying coastal water from urbanization (Van Dolah et al. 2008; Rai 2008), mitigating storm impacts (Boutwell and Westra 2016; Narayan et al. 2017), carbon sequestration (Chmura et al. 2003; Drake et al. 2015), nourishing wildlife habitats and supporting seafood industry (Boesch and Turner 1984; Upchurch and Wenner 2008). Acute marsh dieback (AMD) has been sporadically observed on coasts where healthy salt marshes experienced browning and thinning of aboveground foliage, sometimes turning to rhizome stubble and eventually mudflat (Alber et al. 2008). It is also termed sudden vegetation dieback (SVD) since the affected marsh often died within 4–8 months (Elmer et al. 2013). The influence of marsh dieback to the abovementioned environmental, ecological and economic values could be tremendous.
EDXRF Detection of Trace Elements in Salt Marsh Sediment of Bangladesh and Probabilistic Ecological Risk Assessment
Published in Soil and Sediment Contamination: An International Journal, 2022
Refat Jahan Rakib, M. Belal Hossain, Yeasmin Nahar Jolly, Shirin Akther, Saiful Islam
Trace elements pollution in the saltmarsh aquatic environment has become a world-wide phenomenon nowadays as they are indestructible and most of them have toxic effects on organisms (MacFarlane and Burchett 2012) and have the ability to bioaccumulate in the aquatic ecosystems (Censi et al. 2006). Salt marshes are an integral part of the coastal/marine ecosystem usually situated within estuarine systems, serving as nursery grounds and habitat for commercial and game species, sites of recreation, housing, industry and waste disposal (Siddique and Aktar 2012). In recent years, trace elements contamination in the marine environment has attracted global attention owing to its environmental toxicity, abundance and persistence (Ali et al. 2016, 2018; Pandey et al. 2019; Proshad, Kormoker, and Islam 2019; Raknuzzaman et al. 2016a, 2016b). Estuaries receive significant inputs of pollutants as they are usually located within the vicinities of extremely inhabited and industrial areas. The discharge of trace elements into the marine ecosystem could have prejudicial effects on the receiving water body (Ali et al. 2020, 2019; Islam and Al-Mamun 2017). Most elements getting into the marine system become related to particulates and are finally deposited into surface sediments (Islam, Proshad, and Ahmed 2018a; Reboreda et al. 2008; Ustaoğlu and Tepe 2019; Ustaoğlu, Tepe, and Aydin 2020). During deposition, some elements are stabilized and immobilized, which may have an additional effect on the supply of trace elements within the salt marsh sediments (Stolz and Oremland 1999; Tokatli and Ustaoğlu 2020). Pandey et al. (2019) exhibited that trace elements are maintained and accumulated within the salt marsh sediment through dissolution, precipitation, sorption, and complexation phenomena. The salt marsh genesis relies on accretion due to sedimentation of suspended matter, supplied by tidal water or flood water of both marine and riverine origin (Aydin et al. 2020; Proshad et al. 2020; Proshad, Kormoker, and Islam 2019).