Salt marsh vegetation promotes efficient tidal channel networks

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...

Salt Marsh Tidal Channels

Salt marsh tidal channels are highly sinuous. For this project, field surveys and aerial photographs were used to characterize the planform of tidal channels at China Camp Marsh in the San Francisco Bay, California. To model the planform evolution, we assume that the topographic curvature of the channel centreline is a key element driving meander migration. Extraction of curvature data from a p...

Modelling of groundwater-vegetation interactions in a tidal marsh

Tidal influences on carbon assimilation by a salt marsh

Salt marshes are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth, and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Net carbon dioxide (CO2) ecosystem exchanges in coastal salt marshes remain poorly investigated. In Spartina alterniflora dominated North American Atlantic coast marshes, the lack of a clear understanding of how Spartina alterniflora responds to flooding limits our current abil...

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...