Salt marsh ecohydrological zonation due to heterogeneous vegetation-groundwater-surface water interactions

Modelling of groundwater-vegetation interactions in a tidal marsh

Measuring groundwater-surface water interactions: a review

Papers published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions are under open-access review for the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Abstract Interactions between groundwater and surface water play a critical role in the functioning of riparian ecosystems. In the context of sustainable river basin management it is crucial to understand and quantify exchange processes between gro...

Self-organization and vegetation collapse in salt marsh ecosystems.

Complexity theory predicts that local feedback processes may strongly affect the organization of ecosystems on larger spatial scales. Whether complexity leads to increased resilience and stability or to increased vulnerability and criticality remains one of the dominant questions in ecology. We present a combined theoretical and empirical study of complex dynamics in mineralogenic salt marsh ec...

Does vegetation prevent wave erosion of salt marsh edges?

This study challenges the paradigm that salt marsh plants prevent lateral wave-induced erosion along wetland edges by binding soil with live roots and clarifies the role of vegetation in protecting the coast. In both laboratory flume studies and controlled field experiments, we show that common salt marsh plants do not significantly mitigate the total amount of erosion along a wetland edge. We ...

Salt marsh vegetation promotes efficient tidal channel networks

Tidal channel networks mediate the exchange of water, nutrients and sediment between an estuary and marshes. Biology feeds back into channel morphodynamics through the influence of vegetation on both flow and the cohesive strength of channel banks. Determining how vegetation affects channel networks is essential in understanding the biological functioning of intertidal ecosystems and their ecos...