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Tidal marshes have a large capacity for producing and storing organic matter, making their role in the global carbon budget disproportionate to land area. Most of the organic matter stored in these systems is in soils where it contributes 2-5 times more to surface accretion than an equal mass of minerals. Soil organic matter (SOM) sequestration is the primary process by which tidal marshes become perched high in the tidal frame, decreasing their vulnerability to accelerated relative sea level rise (RSLR). Plant growth responses to RSLR are well understood and represented in century-scale forecast models of soil surface elevation change. We understand far less about the response of SOM decomposition to accelerated RSLR. Here we quantified the effects of flooding depth and duration on SOM decomposition by exposing planted and unplanted field-based mesocosms to experimentally manipulated relative sea level over two consecutive growing seasons. SOM decomposition was quantified as CO2 efflux, with plant- and SOM-derived CO2 separated via δ(13) CO2 . Despite the dominant paradigm that decomposition rates are inversely related to flooding, SOM decomposition in the absence of plants was not sensitive to flooding depth and duration. The presence of plants had a dramatic effect on SOM decomposition, increasing SOM-derived CO2 flux by up to 267% and 125% (in 2012 and 2013, respectively) compared to unplanted controls in the two growing seasons. Furthermore, plant stimulation of SOM decomposition was strongly and positively related to plant biomass and in particular aboveground biomass. We conclude that SOM decomposition rates are not directly driven by relative sea level and its effect on oxygen diffusion through soil, but indirectly by plant responses to relative sea level. If this result applies more generally to tidal wetlands, it has important implications for models of SOM accumulation and surface elevation change in response to accelerated RSLR.

Abstract. Tidal wetlands, such as tidal marshes and mangroves, are hotspots for carbon sequestration. The preservation of organic matter (OM) is a critical process by which tidal wetlands exert influence over the global carbon cycle and at the same time gain elevation to keep pace with sea-level rise (SLR). The present study assessed the effects of temperature and relative sea level on the decomposition rate and stabilization of OM in tidal wetlands worldwide, utilizing commercially available standardized litter. While effects on decomposition rate per se were minor, we show strong negative effects of temperature and relative sea level on stabilization, as based on the fraction of labile, rapidly hydrolyzable OM that becomes stabilized during deployment. Across study sites, OM stabilization was 29 % lower in low, more frequently flooded vs. high, less frequently flooded zones. Stabilization declined by ∼ 75 % over the studied temperature gradient from 10.9 to 28.5 ∘C. Additionally, data from the Plum Island long-term ecological research site in Massachusetts, USA, show a pronounced reduction in OM stabilization by > 70 % in response to simulated coastal eutrophication, confirming the potentially high sensitivity of OM stabilization to global change. We therefore provide evidence that rising temperature, accelerated SLR, and coastal eutrophication may decrease the future capacity of tidal wetlands to sequester carbon by affecting the initial transformations of recent OM inputs to soil OM.

Tidal wetlands have been increasingly recognized as long-term carbon sinks in recent years. Work on carbon sequestration and decomposition processes in tidal wetlands focused so far mainly on effects of global-change factors such as sea-level rise and increasing temperatures. However, little is known about effects of land use, such as livestock grazing, on organic matter decomposition and ultimately carbon sequestration. The present work aims at understanding the mechanisms by which large herbivores can affect organic matter decomposition in tidal wetlands. This was achieved by studying both direct animal-microbe interactions and indirect animal-plant-microbe interactions in grazed and ungrazed areas of two long-term experimental field sites at the German North Sea coast. We assessed bacterial and fungal gene abundance using quantitative PCR, as well as the activity of microbial exo-enzymes by conducting fluorometric assays. We demonstrate that grazing can have a profound impact on the microbial community structure of tidal wetland soils, by consistently increasing the fungi-to-bacteria ratio by 38-42%, and therefore potentially exerts important control over carbon turnover and sequestration. The observed shift in the microbial community was primarily driven by organic matter source, with higher contributions of recalcitrant autochthonous (terrestrial) vs. easily degradable allochthonous (marine) sources in grazed areas favoring relative fungal abundance. We propose a novel and indirect form of animal-plant-microbe interaction: top-down control of aboveground vegetation structure determines the capacity of allochthonous organic matter trapping during flooding and thus the structure of the microbial community. Furthermore, our data provide the first evidence that grazing slows down microbial exo-enzyme activity and thus decomposition through changes in soil redox chemistry. Activities of enzymes involved in C cycling were reduced by 28-40%, while activities of enzymes involved in N cycling were not consistently affected by grazing. It remains unclear if this is a trampling-driven direct grazing effect, as hypothesized in earlier studies, or if the effect on redox chemistry is plant mediated and thus indirect. This study improves our process-level understanding of how grazing can affect the microbial ecology and biogeochemistry of semi-terrestrial ecosystems that may help explain and predict differences in C turnover and sequestration rates between grazed and ungrazed systems.

Salt marshes and other blue carbon ecosystems have been increasingly recognized for their carbon (C)-sink function. Yet, an improved assessment of organic carbon (OC) stocks and C-sequestration rates is still required to include blue C in C-crediting programs. Particularly, factors inducing variability in the permanence of sequestration and allochthonous contributions to soil OC stocks require an improved understanding. This study evaluates the potential for long-term C sequestration in the semi-natural salt marshes of the European Wadden Sea (WS), conducting deep (1.3 m) down-core OC-density assessments in sites with known site histories and accretion records. Because these young marshes have developed from tidal-flat ecosystems and have undergone rapid succession during the last 80-120 yr, the identification of different ecosystem stages down-core was crucial to interpret possible changes in OC density. This was conducted based on the down-core distribution of different foraminiferal taxa and grain sizes. Comparisons of historic and recent accretion rates were conducted to understand possible effects of accretion rate on down-core changes in OC density. d 13 C in OC was used to assess the origin of accumulated OC (autochthonous vs. allochthonous sources). We show that large amounts of short-term accumulated OC are lost down-core in the well-aerated marsh soils of the WS region and thus emphasize the importance of deep sampling to avoid overestimation of C sequestration. Despite steep declines in OC-density downcore, minimum values of OC density in the salt-marsh soils were considerably higher than those of the former tidal-flat sediments that the marshes were converted from, illustrating the greater C-sequestration potential of the vegetated ecosystem. However, our data also suggest that marine-derived allochthonous OC makes up a large fraction of the effectively, long-term preserved OC stock, whereas atmospheric CO 2 removal by marsh vegetation contributes relatively little. The implication of this finding for C-crediting approaches in blue C ecosystems has yet to be clarified.

In many wetland plants, belowground transport of O2 via aerenchyma tissue and subsequent O2 loss across root surfaces generates small oxic root zones at depth in the rhizosphere with important consequences for carbon and nutrient cycling. This study demonstrates how roots of the intertidal salt-marsh plant Spartina anglica affect not only O2, but also pH and CO2 dynamics, resulting in distinct gradients of O2, pH, and CO2 in the rhizosphere. A novel planar optode system (VisiSens TD®, PreSens GmbH) was used for taking high-resolution 2D-images of the O2, pH, and CO2 distribution around roots during alternating light–dark cycles. Belowground sediment oxygenation was detected in the immediate vicinity of the roots, resulting in oxic root zones with a 1.7 mm radius from the root surface. CO2 accumulated around the roots, reaching a concentration up to threefold higher than the background concentration, and generally affected a larger area within a radius of 12.6 mm from the root surface. This contributed to a lowering of pH by 0.6 units around the roots. The O2, pH, and CO2 distribution was recorded on the same individual roots over diurnal light cycles in order to investigate the interlinkage between sediment oxygenation and CO2 and pH patterns. In the rhizosphere, oxic root zones showed higher oxygen concentrations during illumination of the aboveground biomass. In darkness, intraspecific differences were observed, where some plants maintained oxic root zones in darkness, while others did not. However, the temporal variation in sediment oxygenation was not reflected in the temporal variations of pH and CO2 around the roots, which were unaffected by changing light conditions at all times. This demonstrates that plant-mediated sediment oxygenation fueling microbial decomposition and chemical oxidation has limited impact on the dynamics of pH and CO2 in S. anglica rhizospheres, which may in turn be controlled by other processes such as root respiration and root exudation.

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