Recovery of macrobenthic communities in tidal flats following the Great East Japan Earthquake

The Great East Japan Earthquake, with a moment magnitude scale of 9.0M on March 11, 2011, caused huge tsunamis that altered aquatic communities in the nearshore ecosystems along Pacific coastline Sendai Bay, Japan. However, to understand ecological implications tsunamis' impact, an assessment successive changes and their fate over time is essential. Therefore, we examined eight tidal flat Bay aid citizen volunteers 9 years, compared microbenthic compositions those before earthquake. results revealed differences community by decreased from year finally disappeared after 7 years except for one where largely changed environmental conditions. present study indicates these are regulated mainly conditions highly resilient tsunami disturbance.