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Are Tidal Salt Marshes Exposed to Nutrient Pollution more Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise?

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Abstract

Over the past four decades, Long Island, NY, USA, has lost coastal wetlands at a rate of 4% per decade due to submergence. In this study, we examined relationships between the rate of tidal salt marsh loss and environmental factors, including marsh elevation, tidal range, and wastewater exposure through analysis of stable isotope ratios of marsh soils and biota. Our goal was to identify factors that increase vulnerability of marshes to sea level rise, with a specific emphasis on the potential role of poor water quality in hastening marsh loss. Our results suggest that wastewater exposure may accelerate loss of intertidal marsh, but does not negatively impact high tidal marsh resilience to sea level rise. And while marsh elevation and tidal range were statistically significant predictors of marsh loss, they similarly displayed opposite relationships among marsh zones. This study suggests that different functional zones of coastal salt marshes may not respond similarly to global change factors, and that elevation may be an important factor mediating eutrophication effects to coastal salt marshes.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Adam Starke, Ellen Kracauer Hartig, and Chris Haight for contributing to the collection of samples at Long Island coastal wetlands and for helpful discussions. We thank Elisabeth Powell and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Sciences and the Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, USA

    Johannes R. Krause & Elizabeth Burke Watson

  2. ORD-NHEERL, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Narragansett, RI, USA

    Cathleen Wigand

  3. The Nature Conservancy Long Island Chapter, Uplands Farm Sanctuary, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA

    Nicole Maher

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  1. Johannes R. Krause
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Correspondence to Johannes R. Krause.

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Krause, J.R., Watson, E.B., Wigand, C. et al. Are Tidal Salt Marshes Exposed to Nutrient Pollution more Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise?. Wetlands 40, 1539–1548 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01254-8

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