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Soil Structure and Its Relationship to Shallow Soil Subsidence in Coastal Wetlands

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Abstract

Accelerating sea-level rise poses a threat to mangroves and salt marshes. Sediment accretion on the soil surface and belowground root production is proposed to increase soil elevation enabling these intertidal habitats to maintain their position relative to mean sea level. However, shallow soil subsidence is frequently observed, which may cancel out or even outweigh the positive effects of surface accretion and root production on soil elevation gains. The processes that lead to shallow soil subsidence have not often been investigated. Here, we used computed tomography (CT) imaging to determine the volume of coarse pores in the top 20 cm of 30-cm-deep soil cores collected from mangroves and salt marshes within Moreton Bay, eastern Australia. The four field sites have long-term observations of variation in soil surface elevation gain, surface accretion rate, and shallow subsidence rate using the rod surface elevation table-marker horizon (RSET-MH) method. Over our sites, we found that the rates of shallow soil subsidence were positively related to the volume of soil coarse pores and soil clay and silt content rather than to the volume of fine pores or total porosity or other soil properties. In turn, the volume of soil coarse pores was positively related to the volume of animal burrows and root mass. Fine-pore volume and total porosity of soils were negatively associated with soil bulk density, which was in turn negatively related to soil organic matter content. Our results indicate influences of differently sized soil pores in shallow soil subsidence and suggest that animal burrowing may play a role in shallow soil subsidence.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. K-le Gomez-Cabrera for assistance in the lab.

Funding

The study was supported by Australian Research Council award DP150104437 and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41676080 and 41776103). Yanmei Xiong was supported by the China Scholarship Council ((2017)3059) to visit The University of Queensland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Tropical Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Guangzhou, 510520, China

    Yanmei Xiong

  2. School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Yanmei Xiong, Anne Ola, Sang Minh Phan & Catherine E. Lovelock

  3. School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jingtao Wu

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  1. Yanmei Xiong
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Correspondence to Yanmei Xiong.

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Communicated by John C. Callaway

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Xiong, Y., Ola, A., Phan, S.M. et al. Soil Structure and Its Relationship to Shallow Soil Subsidence in Coastal Wetlands. Estuaries and Coasts 42, 2114–2123 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00659-2

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