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Plant Population Dynamics in a Degraded Coastal Wetland and Implications for the Carbon Cycle

  • Wetlands in the Developing World
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Abstract

Habitat destruction caused by human activities is threatening wetland plants. Based on Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 8 OLI, and Google Earth images, we analysed the spatiotemporal dynamics of plant populations in a degraded wetland in the Minjiang River Estuary from 2009 to 2019. Field survey records, tasselled cap transformation, and supervised classification were used for the image interpretation. The results indicate that the plant habitat area decreased by 42.1% over these 10 years. Consequently, the distribution area of each dominant species declined, and the proportion of total vegetated area in the habitat decreased from 53.1% to 32.6%. Moreover, the dominance relations of the species changed from Spartina alterniflora > Phragmites australis > Cyperus malaccensis > Scirpus triqueter to P. australis > S. alterniflora > C. malaccensis > S. triqueter. We predict that the vegetation landscape in the wetland will be composed exclusively of P. australis and S. alterniflora if habitat destruction continues. Finally, our research shows that the NPCS (net plant carbon sequestration) and PCS (plant carbon stock) in the wetland and the average values of methane flux, NPCS, PCS, and SOCS (sediment organic carbon stock) in the vegetated area have all decreased due to plant population declines.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Nanjing Normal University, Fujian Normal University, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41671428). We sincerely thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions for this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Yinrui Cheng, Yong Zha & Lijuan Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment (Nanjing Normal University), Ministry of Education, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Yinrui Cheng, Yong Zha & Lijuan Chen

  3. Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Yinrui Cheng, Yong Zha & Lijuan Chen

  4. School of Geography, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

    Yinrui Cheng, Chuan Tong & Yuexin Fan

  5. College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Minjie Hu

  6. College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, 241000, China

    Dandan Du

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  1. Yinrui Cheng
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Correspondence to Yinrui Cheng.

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Cheng, Y., Zha, Y., Tong, C. et al. Plant Population Dynamics in a Degraded Coastal Wetland and Implications for the Carbon Cycle. Wetlands 40, 1617–1625 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-020-01268-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-020-01268-7

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