Publication Date:
2011-05-01
Description:
Salt marshes occur extensively along mid-latitude coasts and provide valuable ecosystem services such as filtering pollutants, attenuating waves during storms, enhancing yields of fisheries, and serving as an organic carbon sink (e.g., Costanza et al., 1997). Both the emergence and continued survival of salt marshes are related to the rate of relative sea-level rise (SLR). Following the last glacial maximum, rising sea level from melting glaciers appears to have precluded marsh development. Dating of basal peats, which overlie mineral sediment and mark marsh initiation, suggests that marshes did not become widespread until sea level stabilized at ca. 6–7 kyr B.P. (Shennan and Horton, 2002; Engelhart et al., 2009). The rate of SLR is once again accelerating (Jevrejeva et al., 2008), leading to increased concern over the future survival of salt marshes (e.g., Kirwan et al., 2010). This concern is motivated, in large part, due to losses of vast amounts of wetlands over the past century; for example, 20,000 ha in the San Francisco Bay (Gedan et al., 2009, and references therein) and approximately 4000 km2 in the Mississippi Delta plain (Day et al., 2000)...
Print ISSN:
0091-7613
Electronic ISSN:
1943-2682
Topics:
Geosciences
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