Understanding ecosystem light use efficiency (LUE) of salt marshes, tidal wetlands with high salinity at the terrestrial-aquatic interface, is important to effectively estimate ecosystem productivity through remote sensing techniques. These salt marshes have high soil carbon burial rates, making them important ecosystems for studying blue carbon dynamics (Chmura et al., 2003;Mcleod et al., 2011). Juncus roemerianus and Spartina alterniflora are two dominate species found within salt marshes of the eastern United States across large latitudinal ranges: 25°-42° and 30°-50°, respectively (Eleuterius, 1976;Smart, 1982). These two species' spatial distributions in coastal zones are driven by biophysical gradients including elevation, salinity,
Tidal marshes are among the most productive ecosystems, and an important carbon (C) sink in the global carbon cycle (Bianchi, 2006). The average C burial rate of coastal salt marshes is as much as 1,713 g C m −2 yr −1 in sediment, ∼35 times higher than in terrestrial forests (McLeod et al., 2011), which provides the key scientific motivation to understand salt marsh productivity across space and time. Salt marshes experience periodic tidal flooding, which affects plant production (Hawman et al., 2021;O'Connell et al., 2021) and photosynthetic rates (Kathilankal et al., 2011). However, only a handful of studies have been conducted to understand photosynthetic behavior under flooded conditions within tidal marshes (Duarte et al., 2005;Kathilankal et al., 2008). Pezeshki et al. (1993) showed that a congener, Spartina patens, had a 46% reduction in rates of photosynthesis and 18% reduction in carbon assimilation under hypoxic (flooded) conditions in microcosm experiments. Kathilankal et al. (2008) used field measurements during tidal flooding to demonstrate a 66% reduction in photosynthetic activity of the submerged salt marsh plant,
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