Abstract. Salinization, a widespread threat to the structure and ecological functioning of inland and coastal wetlands, is currently occurring at an unprecedented rate and geographic scale. The causes of salinization are diverse and include alterations to freshwater flows, land-clearance, irrigation, disposal of wastewater effluent, sea level rise, storm surges, and applications of de-icing salts. Climate change and anthropogenic modifications to the hydrologic cycle are expected to further increase the extent and severity of wetland salinization. Salinization alters the fundamental physicochemical nature of the soil-water environment, increasing ionic concentrations and altering chemical equilibria and mineral solubility. Increased concentrations of solutes, especially sulfate, alter the biogeochemical cycling of major elements including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, iron, and silica. The effects of salinization on wetland biogeochemistry typically include decreased inorganic nitrogen removal (with implications for water quality and climate regulation), decreased carbon storage (with implications for climate regulation and wetland accretion), and increased generation of toxic sulfides (with implications for nutrient cycling and the health/functioning of wetland biota). Indeed, increased salt and sulfide concentrations induce physiological stress in wetland biota and ultimately can result in large shifts in wetland communities and their associated ecosystem functions. The productivity and composition of freshwater species assemblages will be highly altered, and there is a high potential for the disruption of existing interspecific interactions. Although there is a wealth of information on how salinization impacts individual ecosystem components, relatively few studies have addressed the complex and often non-linear feedbacks that determine ecosystem-scale responses or considered how wetland salinization will affect landscape-level processes. Although the salinization of wetlands may be unavoidable in many cases, these systems may also prove to be a fertile testing ground for broader ecological theories including (but not limited to): investigations into alternative stable states and tipping points, trophic cascades, disturbance-recovery processes, and the role of historical events and landscape context in driving community response to disturbance.
Coastal wetlands have the capacity to retain and denitrify large quantities of reactive nitrogen (N), making them important in attenuating increased anthropogenic N flux to coastal ecosystems. The ability of coastal wetlands to retain and transform N is being reduced by wetland losses resulting from land development. Nitrogen retention in coastal wetlands is further threatened by the increasing frequency and spatial extent of saltwater inundation in historically freshwater ecosystems, due to the combined effects of dredging, declining river discharge to coastal areas due to human water use, increased drought frequency, and accelerating sea-level rise. Because saltwater incursion may affect N cycling through multiple mechanisms, the impacts of salinization on coastal freshwater wetland N retention and transformation are not well understood. Here, we show that repeated annual saltwater incursion during late summer droughts in the coastal plain of North Carolina changed N export from organic to inorganic forms and led to a doubling of annual NH(4)(+) export from a 440 hectare former agricultural field undergoing wetland restoration. Soil solution NH(4)(+) concentrations in two mature wetlands also increased with salinization, but the magnitude of increase was smaller than that in the former agricultural field. Long-term saltwater exposure experiments with intact soil columns demonstrated that much of the increase in reactive N released could be explained by exchange of salt cations with sediment NH(4)(+). Using these findings together with the predicted flooding of 1661 km(2) of wetlands along the NC coast by 2100, we estimate that saltwater incursion into these coastal areas could release up to 18 077 Mg N, or approximately half the annual NH(4)(+) flux of the Mississippi River. Our results suggest that saltwater incursion into coastal freshwater wetlands globally could lead to increased N loading to sensitive coastal waters.
Streams and rivers are important conduits of terrestrially derived carbon (C) to atmospheric and marine reservoirs. Leaf litter breakdown rates are expected to increase as water temperatures rise in response to climate change. The magnitude of increase in breakdown rates is uncertain, given differences in litter quality and microbial and detritivore community responses to temperature, factors that can influence the apparent temperature sensitivity of breakdown and the relative proportion of C lost to the atmosphere vs. stored or transported downstream. Here, we synthesized 1025 records of litter breakdown in streams and rivers to quantify its temperature sensitivity, as measured by the activation energy (E , in eV). Temperature sensitivity of litter breakdown varied among twelve plant genera for which E could be calculated. Higher values of E were correlated with lower-quality litter, but these correlations were influenced by a single, N-fixing genus (Alnus). E values converged when genera were classified into three breakdown rate categories, potentially due to continual water availability in streams and rivers modulating the influence of leaf chemistry on breakdown. Across all data representing 85 plant genera, the E was 0.34 ± 0.04 eV, or approximately half the value (0.65 eV) predicted by metabolic theory. Our results indicate that average breakdown rates may increase by 5-21% with a 1-4 °C rise in water temperature, rather than a 10-45% increase expected, according to metabolic theory. Differential warming of tropical and temperate biomes could result in a similar proportional increase in breakdown rates, despite variation in E values for these regions (0.75 ± 0.13 eV and 0.27 ± 0.05 eV, respectively). The relative proportions of gaseous C loss and organic matter transport downstream should not change with rising temperature given that E values for breakdown mediated by microbes alone and microbes plus detritivores were similar at the global scale.
Abstract.Whether through sea level rise or wetland restoration, agricultural soils in coastal areas will be inundated at increasing rates, renewing connections to sensitive surface waters and raising critical questions about environmental trade-offs. Wetland restoration is often implemented in agricultural catchments to improve water quality through nutrient removal. Yet flooding of soils can also increase production of the greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane, representing a potential environmental trade-off. Our study aimed to quantify and compare greenhouse gas emissions from unmanaged and restored forested wetlands, as well as actively managed agricultural fields within the North Carolina coastal plain, USA. In sampling conducted once every two months over a two-year comparative study, we found that soil carbon dioxide flux (range: 8000-64 800 kg CO 2 Áha À1 Áyr À1 ) comprised 66-100% of total greenhouse gas emissions from all sites and that methane emissions (range: À6.87 to 197 kg CH 4 Áha À1 Áyr À1 ) were highest from permanently inundated sites, while nitrous oxide fluxes (range: À1.07 to 139 kg N 2 OÁha À1 Áyr À1 ) were highest in sites with lower water tables. Contrary to predictions, greenhouse gas fluxes (as CO 2 equivalents) from the restored wetland were lower than from either agricultural fields or unmanaged forested wetlands. In these acidic coastal freshwater ecosystems, the conversion of agricultural fields to flooded young forested wetlands did not result in increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
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