Abstract
Located in Oconto County, Wisconsin, Oconto Marsh #2 is a Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program study site that borders the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Plant communities were characterized at Oconto Marsh #2 along three transects in 2011, 2016, 2017 and 2021, a period when Lake Michigan water levels increased by two meters. Transects were placed to intersect with three vegetation zones: submergent, emergent, and wet meadow. Here, we report on physical landscape changes and the vegetation composition changes that occurred from 2011 to 2021. From satellite imagery interpretation, we show approximately 61,000 m2 of what was emergent and wet meadow vegetation in 2011, transitioned into a submerged aquatic community in 2021. High energy wave action penetrating farther landward, a consequence of higher water levels, is likely most responsible for causing these changes. Plant species richness was lowest in 2011 (32 species) and ranged from 52 to 56 taxa in later years. Using multivariate ordination and PERMANOVA, we show plant composition in 2011 was different from 2016, 2017, and 2021. While invasive Phragmites australis was treated with herbicide in 2014, disturbance from progressively increasing water levels has facilitated considerable changes in plant composition and wetland zone extents since monitoring began. Despite successful treatment of P. australis, encounters with more non-native species while sampling farther landward in later years has caused site-wide declines in multiple metrics of floristic quality. Of critical importance, in 2021, we discovered invasive Hydrocharis morus-ranae at the site, the first documentation in the state of Wisconsin.
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Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/). b Aerial photos of the Oconto Marsh #2 and sampling points along research transects for 2011, c 2016, and d 2018. Wet meadow zone: blue points; Emergent zone: pink points, Submergent zone: white points. Yellow circles at the transect terminal ends represent the original endpoints established in 2011. County Road Y is shown in yellow. Satellite imagery from Google Earth (years 2013, 2015, and 2018)
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Acknowledgements
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their contributions in improving this paper. We thank Dr. Dennis Albert and Courtney Fung for reading the manuscript and providing helpful comments. We thank past field sampling crew members M. Jahnke, M. Hogfeldt, N. Dahlberg, and J. Rutherford. This work was funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative as provided by the Great Lakes National Program Office of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, grant numbers GL-00E00612-0, 00E01567 and 00E02956. Although the research described in this work has been funded by the USEPA, it has not been subjected to the agency's required peer and policy review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.
Funding
Funding for this work was provided by the Great Lakes National Program Office under the United States Environmental Protection Agency, grant numbers GL-00E00612-0, 00E01567, and 00E02956 as part of the US federal government’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
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RR—Field work, wrote the manuscript, organized the data, created figures and tables. JH—Field work, created figures. ND—Principal investigator, project conceptualization, assisted writing the manuscript.
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Rutherford, R., Hartsock, J.A. & Danz, N.P. Physical and plant community changes at a Lake Michigan coastal marsh related to a two-meter increase in lake level. Wetlands Ecol Manage 30, 547–560 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-022-09879-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-022-09879-z
Keywords
- Great lakes
- Lake Michigan
- Coastal Wetlands
- Marsh
- Plant communities
- European frogbit
- Phragmites