Salt marshes provide a broad range of valuable ecological services. In urban settings these services are magnified in importance, as marshes are typically smaller, serve more concentrated human populations, and face more dramatic anthropogenic pressures. Unfortunately, our knowledge of material exchange between marshes and coastal waters is limited, particularly in urban areas. Tidal flux studi...

This paper presents a semi-automatic procedure to discriminate seasonally flooded areas in the shallow temporary marshes of Doñana National Park (SW Spain) by using a radiommetrically normalized long time series of Landsat MSS, TM, and ETM+ images (1974–2014). Extensive field campaigns for ground truth data retrieval were carried out simultaneous to Landsat overpasses. Ground truth was used as ...

Molluscs, both gastropods and bivalves, appear to disproportionately influence the dynamics of salt marsh habitats. Bivalves typically are facilitators positively affecting the growth and survival of marshes, but gastropods may have unanticipated top-down effects through direct consumption of the predominant marsh vegetation, Spartina alterniflora. Natural, elevational differences in S. alterni...

The smooth cordgrass Spartina alterniflora is the foundation species in intertidal salt marshes of the North American Atlantic coast. Depending on its elevation within the marsh, S. alterniflora may be submerged for several hours per day. Previous ecosystem-level studies have demonstrated that S. alterniflora marshes are a net sink for nitrogen (N), and that removal of N from flooding tidal wat...

The Coastal Plain Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana nigrescens) was originally described from a small number of specimens from the tidal marshes of the Nanticoke River in southeastern Maryland. Based on our quantitative analysis of a larger series of specimens, we found that Swamp Sparrows collected during the breeding season from the Chesapeake and Delaware bays (and tributaries) and near the...

A methodology combining ecological modelling with geographical information analysis and remote sensing was employed to determine the effects of sea-level rise in estuarine salt marshes, using the Tagus estuary (Portugal) as a case study. The development of salt marsh vegetation was simulated separately for C3 and C4 plants, using a combined biogeochemical and demographic model. This simulation,...

The elevation and extent of coastal marshes are dictated by the interplay between the rate of relative sea-level rise (RRSLR), surface accretion by inorganic sediment deposition, and organic soil production by plants. These accretion processes respond to changes in local and global forcings, such as sediment delivery to the coast, nutrient concentrations, and atmospheric CO2, but their relative...

To understand long-term changes in Chicago region wetlands, in 2002 we investigated the status of 31 high quality grassor sedge-dominated wetland plant communities that were originally sampled in 1976. Our objectives were to quantify vegetation changes over time by resampling transects and then correlating changes with site fire histories, as well as other factors linked with compositional and ...

More than 2 y have passed since the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, yet we still have little understanding of its ecological impacts. Examining effects of this oil spill will generate much-needed insight into how shoreline habitats and the valuable ecological services they provide (e.g., shoreline protection) are affected by and recover from large-scale disturbance. Here w...

Substrate samples were taken from eight marshes in southern Nebraska during the summers of 1985 and 1986 when the marshes were relatively dry. Each sample was 12 inches square by 2 inches deep. The number of samples per marsh ranged from 66 to 112, with transect lengths ranging from 71 to 201 m. Based on a 97.5 % recovery rate, these marshes contained an average of 47,217 lead and 5849 steel sh...