Recovering Salt Marsh Ecosystem Services through Tidal Restoration

Salt marshes are valuable ecosystems, as they provide food, shelter, and important nursery areas for fish and macroinvertebrates, and a wide variety of ecosystem services for human populations. These ecosystem services heavily rely on the floristic composition of the salt marshes with different species conferring different service values and different adaptation and resilience capacities towards ecosystem stressors. Blue carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous stocks are no exception to this, and rely on the interspecific differences in the primary production metabolism and physiological traits. Furthermore, these intrinsic physiological characteristics also modulate the species response to any environmental stressor, such as the ones derived from ongoing global changes. This will heavily shape transitional ecosystem services, with significant changes of the ecosystem value of the salt marshes in terms of cultural, provisioning, regulating, and supporting ecosystem services, with a special emphasis on the possible alterations of the blue carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous stocks retained in these key environments. Thus, the need to integrate plant physiological characteristics and feedbacks towards the expected climate change-driven stressors becomes evident to accurately estimate the ecosystem services of the salt marsh community, and transfer these fundamental services into economic assets, for a fluid communication of the ecosystems value to stakeholders, decision and policy makers, and environmental management entities.

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The state of legislation and policy protecting Australia's mangrove and salt marsh and their ecosystem services

Marine Policy ◽

10.1016/j.marpol.2016.06.025 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 72 ◽

pp. 139-155 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

Kerrylee Rogers ◽

Paul I. Boon ◽

Simon Branigan ◽

Norman C. Duke ◽

Colin D. Field ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Salt Marsh ◽

The State

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Constraining natural and anthropogenic disturbances in the delivery of coastal ecosystem services

10.1575/1912/27911 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Sheron Y. Luk

Keyword(s):

Water Quality ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Salt Marsh ◽

Service Delivery ◽

New England ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

Ecosystem Functioning ◽

Coastal Ecosystem ◽

Anthropogenic Activity ◽

Estuarine Ecosystem

Coastal ecosystems provide key services that benefit human wellbeing yet are undergoing rapid degradation due to natural and anthropogenic pressures. This thesis seeks to understand how disturbances impact salt marsh and estuarine ecosystem functioning in order to refine their role in coastal ecosystem service delivery and predict future resilience. Salt marsh survival relative to sealevel rise increasingly relies on the accumulation and preservation of soil organic carbon (SOC). Firstly, I characterized SOC development and turnover in a New England salt marsh and found that salt marsh soils typically store marsh grass-derived compounds that are reworked over centuries-to-millennia. Next, I assessed how two common marsh disturbances – natural ponding and anthropogenic mosquito ditching – affect salt marsh carbon cycling and storage. Salt marsh ponds deepen through soil erosion and decomposition of long-buried marsh peat. Further, the SOC lost during pond development is not fully recouped once drained ponds are revegetated and virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding marsh. Mosquito ditches, which were installed in ~ 90% of New England salt marshes during the Great Depression, did not significantly alter marsh carbon storage. In Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, a US National Estuary, we tested relationships among measures of estuarine water quality, recreational activity, and local socioeconomic conditions to understand how the benefits of cultural ecosystem services are affected by shifts in water quality associated with global change and anthropogenic activity. Over a 24-year period, water quality degradation coinciding with increases in Chlorophyll a is associated with declines in fishery abundance and cultural ecosystem service values ($0.08 – 0.67 million USD). In combination, incorporation of both anthropogenic and natural disturbances to coastal ecosystem functioning and service delivery can produce improved estimates of ecosystem service valuation for effective resource decision-making under future climate scenarios.

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Salt Marsh Restoration for the Provision of Multiple Ecosystem Services

Diversity ◽

10.3390/d13120680 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (12) ◽

pp. 680

Author(s):

Janine B. Adams ◽

Jacqueline L. Raw ◽

Taryn Riddin ◽

Johan Wasserman ◽

Lara Van Niekerk

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Salt Marsh ◽

Salt Marshes ◽

Well Being ◽

Coastal Protection ◽

Degraded Land ◽

National Scale ◽

Salt Marsh Restoration ◽

Marsh Restoration ◽

Run Off

Restoration of salt marsh is urgent, as these ecosystems provide natural coastal protection from sea-level rise impacts, contribute towards climate change mitigation, and provide multiple ecosystem services including supporting livelihoods. This study identified potential restoration sites for intervention where agricultural and degraded land could be returned to salt marsh at a national scale in South African estuaries. Overall, successful restoration of salt marsh in some estuaries will require addressing additional pressures such as freshwater inflow reduction and deterioration of water quality. Here, we present, a socio-ecological systems framework for salt marsh restoration that links salt marsh state and the well-being of people to guide meaningful and implementable management and restoration interventions. The framework is applied to a case study at the Swartkops Estuary where the primary restoration intervention intends to route stormwater run-off to abandoned salt works to re-create aquatic habitat for waterbirds, enhance carbon storage, and provide nutrient filtration. As the framework is generalized, while still allowing for site-specific pressures to be captured, there is potential for it to be applied at the national scale, with the largest degraded salt marsh areas set as priorities for such an initiative. It is estimated that ~1970 ha of salt marsh can be restored in this way, and this represents a 14% increase in the habitat cover for the country. Innovative approaches to restoring and improving condition are necessary for conserving salt marshes and the benefits they provide to society.

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Quantifying vertical deformation of salt marsh substrates and their recovery during and after storm surge inundation

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10682 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Helen Brooks ◽

Iris Moeller ◽

Tom Spencer ◽

Katherine Royse ◽

Simon Price ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Salt Marsh ◽

Sea Level Rise ◽

Normal Stress ◽

Sea Level ◽

Storm Surge ◽

Salt Marshes ◽

Dynamic Responses ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Vertical Deformation

Salt marshes are globally-distributed, intertidal wetlands. These wetlands provide vital ecosystem functions (providing habitats, filtering water and attenuating waves and currents) that can translate into valuable ecosystem services. Alongside the existence of suitable horizontal accommodation space, the ability of the salt marsh platform to accrete or increase in elevation at a rate commensurate with current and projected future rates of sea-level rise is critical to ensuring future saltmarsh functioning.While several studies have assessed whether marsh surface and subsurface processes can keep pace with sea-level rise, few have measured whether, and to what extent, a marsh substrate may consolidate during a storm surge and whether such deformation is permanent or recoverable. This is of key importance given that the frequency and/or magnitude of storm surges is expected to change over the next few decades in some locations. We apply strictly-controlled oedometer tests to understand the response of salt marsh substrates to an applied normal stress (such as that exerted by a storm surge). We compare sediment samples from Tillingham marsh, eastern England, where the sediment is clay/silt-dominated, to samples from Warton marsh, Morecambe Bay, North West England, where the sediment is sand/silt-dominated.This research provides, for the first time, insight into the response of two compositionally-different UK marsh substrates to the application of normal stress, such as that induced by hydrostatic loading during extreme inundation events. We demonstrate that both the expected magnitude of axial displacement and the potential to recover vertical deformation after the event are affected by the particle size distribution and the void ratio, as well as past stress conditions on the marsh (particularly as a result of desiccation). The potential for irrecoverable vertical deformation in response to storm surge loading has not previously been identified in salt marsh studies.The results of this research will improve the ability of future models of marsh geomorphological evolution to better represent these dynamic responses and their implications for the provision of ecosystem services. This research also challenges existing studies which often do not fully parameterise these dynamic responses when considering salt marsh morphodynamics.

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