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Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity

Marsh edge retreat by wave erosion, an ubiquitous process along estuaries, could affect vegetation dynamics in ways that differ from well-established elevation-driven interactions. Along the marshes of Delaware Bay (USA) we show that species composition from marsh edge to interior is driven by gradi...

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Autores principales: Elsey-Quirk, Tracy, Mariotti, Giulio, Valentine, Kendall, Raper, Kirk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6453922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30962472
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42119-8
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author Elsey-Quirk, Tracy
Mariotti, Giulio
Valentine, Kendall
Raper, Kirk
author_facet Elsey-Quirk, Tracy
Mariotti, Giulio
Valentine, Kendall
Raper, Kirk
author_sort Elsey-Quirk, Tracy
collection PubMed
description Marsh edge retreat by wave erosion, an ubiquitous process along estuaries, could affect vegetation dynamics in ways that differ from well-established elevation-driven interactions. Along the marshes of Delaware Bay (USA) we show that species composition from marsh edge to interior is driven by gradients in wave stress, bed elevation, and sediment deposition. At the marsh edge, large wave stress allows only short-statured species. Approximately 17m landward, decreasing wave stress and increasing deposition cause the formation of a ridge. There, high marsh fugitive and shrub species prevails. Both the marsh edge and the ridge retreat synchronously by several meters per year causing wave energy and deposition to change rapidly. Yet, the whole ecogeomorphologic profile translates landward in a dynamic equilibrium, where the low marsh replaces the high marsh ridge community and the high marsh ridge community replaces the mid-marsh grasses on the marsh plain. A plant competition model shows that the disturbances associated with sediment deposition are necessary for the high marsh species to outcompete the mid-marsh grasses during rapid transgression. Marsh retreat creates a moving framework of physical gradients and disturbances that promote the co-existence of over ten different species adjacent to the marsh edge in an otherwise species-poor landscape.
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spelling pubmed-64539222019-04-12 Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity Elsey-Quirk, Tracy Mariotti, Giulio Valentine, Kendall Raper, Kirk Sci Rep Article Marsh edge retreat by wave erosion, an ubiquitous process along estuaries, could affect vegetation dynamics in ways that differ from well-established elevation-driven interactions. Along the marshes of Delaware Bay (USA) we show that species composition from marsh edge to interior is driven by gradients in wave stress, bed elevation, and sediment deposition. At the marsh edge, large wave stress allows only short-statured species. Approximately 17m landward, decreasing wave stress and increasing deposition cause the formation of a ridge. There, high marsh fugitive and shrub species prevails. Both the marsh edge and the ridge retreat synchronously by several meters per year causing wave energy and deposition to change rapidly. Yet, the whole ecogeomorphologic profile translates landward in a dynamic equilibrium, where the low marsh replaces the high marsh ridge community and the high marsh ridge community replaces the mid-marsh grasses on the marsh plain. A plant competition model shows that the disturbances associated with sediment deposition are necessary for the high marsh species to outcompete the mid-marsh grasses during rapid transgression. Marsh retreat creates a moving framework of physical gradients and disturbances that promote the co-existence of over ten different species adjacent to the marsh edge in an otherwise species-poor landscape. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6453922/ /pubmed/30962472 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42119-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Elsey-Quirk, Tracy
Mariotti, Giulio
Valentine, Kendall
Raper, Kirk
Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title_full Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title_fullStr Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title_full_unstemmed Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title_short Retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
title_sort retreating marsh shoreline creates hotspots of high-marsh plant diversity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6453922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30962472
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42119-8
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