An Integration of Numerical Modeling and Paleoenvironmental Analysis Reveals the Effects of Embankment Construction on Long‐Term Salt Marsh Accretion

Abstract

Salt marshes are ecosystems of high environmental and economic value that provide a variety of services, including nutrient removal, habitat provision and high rates of carbon sequestration at geological time scales (Barbier et al., 2011;Zedler & Kercher, 2005). As a result of their ability to buffer storm waves, they also provide coastal protection against flooding (e.g., Leonardi et al., 2018;Moller et al., 1999), which led to a worldwide effort to create new salt marshes and/or restore salt marshes that were previously reclaimed for anthropogenic activities to provide long-term and low-cost coastal protection (Temmerman et al., 2013).Salt marshes form when tidal flats increase in elevation with respect to sea-level, through the delivery of fine sediment from rivers and the sea to estuarine accommodation space, which creates newly exposed surfaces that

Two Centuries of Relative Sea-Level Rise in Dublin, Ireland, Reconstructed by Geological Tide Gauge

“…This results in reduced precision of sample-specific age ranges and also potentially increases the risk of erroneous age estimates (e.g., Barlow et al, 2014). The development of Ramped Pyrolysis Oxidation (RPyOx) radiocarbon dating, which separates carbon fractions thermally, may assist in correcting bulk radiocarbon dates for contamination and improve the resulting chronologies (Rosenheim et al, 2008;Rosenheim et al, 2013;Suzuki et al, 2021) as would further utilisation of luminescence techniques for dating the minerogenic sediment fraction (Plater et al, 2000;Edwards, 2004;Bateman, 2015;Pannozzo et al, 2022).…”