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Temporal and Spatial Relationships Between Watershed Land Use and Salt Marsh Disturbance in a Pacific Estuary

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Abstract

Historical and recent remote sensing data can be used to address temporal and spatial relationships between upland land cover and downstream vegetation response at the watershed scale. This is demonstrated for sub-watersheds draining into Elkhorn Slough, California, where salt marsh habitat has diminished because of the formation of sediment fans that support woody riparian vegetation. Multiple regression models were used to examine which land cover variables and physical properties of the watershed most influenced sediment fan size within 23 sub-watersheds (1.4 ha to 200 ha). Model explanatory power increased (adjusted R2 = 0.94 vs. 0.75) among large sub-watersheds (>10 ha) and historical watershed variables, such as average farmland slope, flowpath slope, and flowpath distance between farmland and marsh, were significant. It was also possible to explain the increase in riparian vegetation by historical watershed variables for the larger sub-watersheds. Sub-watershed area is the overriding physical characteristic influencing the extent of sedimentation in a salt marsh, while percent cover of agricultural land use is the most influential land cover variable. The results also reveal that salt marsh recovery depends on relative cover of different land use classes in the watershed, with greater chances of recovery associated with less intensive agriculture. This research reveals a potential delay between watershed impacts and wetland response that can be best revealed when conducting multi-temporal analyses on larger watersheds.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Bryan Largay of the Resource Conservation District of Monterey County for consultation on watershed hydrology, and Kim Hayes, Eric Van Dyke, and Kerstin Wasson of the Elkhorn Slough Foundation and Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve (ESNERR) for their assistance. Field work would not have been possible without research assistants Asmeret Bier, Brooke Cleveland, Carly Zwerdling, David Wilson, and volunteers from ESNERR. This research was funded by the University of California Center for Water Resources and the University of California Marine Council Coastal Environmental Quality Graduate Fellowship and Graduate Research Support.

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  1. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 137 Mulford Hall #3114, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3114, USA

    Kristin B. Byrd, N. Maggi Kelly & Adina M. Merenlender

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  1. Kristin B. Byrd
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Correspondence to Kristin B. Byrd.

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Byrd, K.B., Kelly, N.M. & Merenlender, A.M. Temporal and Spatial Relationships Between Watershed Land Use and Salt Marsh Disturbance in a Pacific Estuary. Environmental Management 39, 98–112 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-005-0217-z

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