IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0245564.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of a large-scale, natural sediment deposition event on plant cover in a Massachusetts salt marsh

Author

Listed:
  • G E Moore
  • D M Burdick
  • M R Routhier
  • A B Novak
  • A R Payne

Abstract

In mid-winter 2018, an unprecedented sediment deposition event occurred throughout portions of the Great Marsh in Massachusetts. Evaluation of this event in distinct marsh areas spanning three towns (Essex, Ipswich, and Newbury) revealed deposition covering 29.2 hectares with an average thickness of 30.1±2.1 mm measured shortly after deposition. While sediment deposition helps marshes survive sea level rise by building elevation, effects of such a large-scale deposition on New England marshes are unknown. This natural event provided an opportunity to study effects of large-scale sediment addition on plant cover and soil chemistry, with implications for marsh resilience. Sediment thickness did not differ significantly between winter and summer, indicating sediment is not eroding or compacting. The deposited sediment at each site had similar characteristics to that of the adjacent mudflat (e.g., texture, bivalve shells), suggesting that deposited materials resulted from ice rafting from adjacent flats, a natural phenomenon noted by other authors. Vegetative cover was significantly lower in plots with rafted sediment (75.6±2.3%) than sediment-free controls (93.1±1.6%) after one growing season. When sorted by sediment thickness categories, the low thickness level (1–19 mm) had significantly greater percent cover than medium (20–39 mm) and high (40–90 mm) categories. Given that sediment accretion in the Great Marsh was found to average 2.7 mm per year, the sediment thickness documented herein represents ~11 years of sediment accretion with only a 25% reduction in plant cover, suggesting this natural sediment event will likely increase long-term marsh resilience to sea level rise.

Suggested Citation

  • G E Moore & D M Burdick & M R Routhier & A B Novak & A R Payne, 2021. "Effects of a large-scale, natural sediment deposition event on plant cover in a Massachusetts salt marsh," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-14, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0245564
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245564
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245564
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245564&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0245564?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0245564. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.