Impact of adjacent land use on coastal wetland sediments

Karstens, Svenja; Buczko, Uwe; Jurasinski, Gerald; Peticzka, Robert; Glatzel, Stephan

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.01.079

Cited by 48 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…This is in addition to the residential and agricultural land uses in this region 99 . Land use types in a watershed have a critical impact on river sediment quality as land use is associated with natural processes and anthropogenic activities that manipulate the contaminant loads drained into river course 100 . While the growing oil industry in the Shatt Al-Arab basin has its consequences for the environment and communities, such industry has attracted more people to settle in the river basin.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal variability and pollution sources identification of the surface sediments of Shatt Al-Arab River, Southern Iraq

Allafta

Opp

2020

Sci Rep

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Water draining from heavily industrialized basins introduces significant amounts of pollutants to the rivers water and sediments. Heavy industrial activities in the Shatt Al-Arab basin result in increased pollutant loads to the river's surface sediments. Therefore, it becomes crucial to investigate the influence of anthropogenic activities on both spatial and temporal scales. This study unfolded the extent, sources, and distributions of heavy metals pollution in the sediments of the Shatt Al-Arab River. Extensive samplings were performed during the dry and the wet seasons at 25 stations along the river course for the analysis of 11 heavy metals. The analysis revealed high pollution levels in the river sediments compared to both their historical values and international standards. Statistical analysis techniques such as principal component Analysis (pcA) and factor Analysis (fA) were applied. Statistical analysis showed that all the elements were well represented by four varifactors that explained a cumulative total variance of 74%. PCA/FA indicated that most investigated metals were of anthropogenic origins (i.e., industrial, residential, and agricultural sources). pollution indices that were applied, such as contamination factor (cf) and nemerow pollution index (p n), indicated that sediments were: (i) considerably contaminated with fe and Mo (ii) moderately contaminated with cr, Zn, ni, cu, pb and Mn and (iii) not contaminated with co and V. the p n values indicated serious pollution in the river sediments in all sites, even though the pollution was not evenly distributed, i.e., the upstream reaches of the river were more polluted compared to the downstream parts. In contrast to many studies that have reported changes in heavy metals concentrations due to seasonal variations, our data showed no significant relationship between metals concentrations and seasonality. This study addresses several of the major limitations of the current knowledge on this river's pollution sources and analysis, such as the limited number of analyzed pollutants and restricted samplings in the current literature. The findings necessitate the implementation of effective management strategies to control pollution in the river basin. Basra Governorate, the economic capital of Iraq, is the third-largest city in the country with a population of around three million 1. Considered to be the center of the oil industry in Iraq, Basra contributes significantly to the growing national economy (above 70% of the gross national product) 2. However, the economic growth that the country is experiencing has come at a high cost. Such growth has caused severe environmental degradations that not only threatens the environment but also made the resulting economic growth difficult to maintain 3,4. The Shatt Al-Arab River, formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and empties in the Arabian Gulf, is the primary freshwater source in a rather arid area surrounding Basra 5. The river provides lifeline benefits shared by millions of people liv...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal variability and pollution sources identification of the surface sediments of Shatt Al-Arab River, Southern Iraq

Allafta

Opp

2020

Sci Rep

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“…Human activities such as dyking and drainage place intensive pressure on coastal landscapes with sometimes irreversible impairments of their biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functions (Karstens et al, 2016;Zhao et al, 2016). Dykes separate coastal wetlands from resupply of seawater, and drainage for agricultural use induces the aerobic decomposition of organicrich sediments, resulting in substantial CO2 losses and land subsidence (Deverel and Rojstaczer, 1996;Miller, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sulfate deprivation triggers high methane production in a disturbed and rewetted coastal peatland

Koebsch¹,

Winkel²,

Liebner³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In natural coastal wetlands, high supplies of marine sulfate suppress methanogenesis. Coastal wetlands are, however, often subject to disturbance by dyking and drainage for agricultural use and it has been shown that they can turn to potent methane sources when rewetted for remediation, suggesting that the sulfate-related methane suppressing mechanisms were suspended by the preceding land use measures. Here, we unravel the hydrological relocation and biogeochemical S and C transformation processes that induced high methane emissions in a disturbed and rewetted peatland despite former brackish impact. The underlying processes were investigated along a transect of increasing distance to the coastline using a combination of concentration patterns, stable isotope partitioning and analysis of the microbial community structure. We found that dyking and freshwater rewetting caused a distinct freshening and an efficient depletion of the brackish sulfate reservoir by dissimilatory sulfate reduction (DSR). Despite some legacy effects of brackish impact expressed as high amounts of sedimentary S and elevated electrical conductivities, contemporary metabolic processes operated mainly under sulfate-limited conditions. This opened up favorable conditions for the establishment of a prospering methanogenic community in the top 30&#8211;40&#8201;cm of peat, the structure and physiology of which resembles those of terrestrial organic-rich environments. Locally, high amounts of sulfate persisted in deeper peat layers through the suppression of DSR, probably by competitive electron acceptors of terrestrial origin, for example Fe(III), but did not interfere with high methane emissions on ecosystem scale. Our results indicate that the climate effect of disturbed and remediated coastal wetlands cannot simply be derived by analogy with their natural counterparts. From a greenhouse gas perspective, the re-exposure of dyked wetlands to natural coastal dynamics would literally open up the floodgates for a replenishment of the marine sulfate pool and constitute an efficient measure to reduce methane emissions.</p>

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“…, Ryan ), soil conditions (Moon and Wardrop , Karstens et al. , Fennessy et al. ), vegetation composition (Miller et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the public has become more aware of the importance of these systems, wetland managers and scientists have turned their attention toward promoting legislative wetland protections (e.g., legislative measures from the Ramsar Convention) and building inventories that describe the ecological condition of the wetlands that remain, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA) database and The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) Riparia database (available online). 6,7 Given that wetlands are energetically linked (e.g., lateral flow of water, sediments, and chemical constituents) to the larger landscapes and waterscapes that surround them, wetland ecologists have correlated measures of human activity in adjacent landscapes (e.g., road density, land use intensity, and buffer width) to changes in wetland hydrological regimes (Adamus et al 2001, Ryan 2005, soil conditions (Moon and Wardrop 2013, Karstens et al 2016, Fennessy et al 2018, vegetation composition , and diversity (Houlahan et al 2006), macroinvertebrate composition (Laubscher 2005), and amphibian species richness, abundance, and composition (Houlahan and Findlay 2004). From this Manuscript received 19 February 2018;revised 11 July 2018;accepted 5 September 2018.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine‐scale spatial homogenization of microbial habitats: a multivariate index of headwater wetland complex condition

Moon

Wardrop

Smithwick

et al. 2018

Ecological Applications

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With growing public awareness that wetlands are important to society, there are intensifying efforts to understand the ecological condition of those wetlands that remain, and to develop indicators of wetland condition. Indicators based on soils are not well developed and are absent in some current assessment protocols; these could be advantageous, particularly for soils, which are complex habitats for plants, invertebrates, and microbial communities. In this study, we examine whether multivariate soil indicators, correlated with microbial biomass and community composition, can be used to distinguish reference standard (i.e., high condition) headwater wetland complexes from impacted headwater wetland complexes in central Pennsylvania, USA. Our reference standard sites existed in forested landscapes, while our impacted sites were situated in multi‐use landscapes and were affected by a range of land‐use legacies in the 1900s. We found that current assessment protocols are likely underrepresenting sampling needs to accurately represent site mean soil properties. On average, more samples were required to represent soil property means in reference standard sites compared to impacted sites. Reference standard and impacted sites also had noticeably different types of microbial habitats for the two multivariate soil indices assessed, and impacted sites were more homogenized in terms of the fine‐scale (i.e., 1 and 5 m) spatial variability of these indices. Our study shows promise for the use of multivariate soil indices as indicators of wetland condition and provides insights into the sample sizes and scales at which soil sampling should occur during assessments. Future work is needed to test the generalizability of these findings across wetland types and ecoregions and establish definitive links between structural changes in microbial habitats and changes in wetland soil functioning.

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Impact of adjacent land use on coastal wetland sediments

Cited by 48 publications

References 37 publications

Spatio-temporal variability and pollution sources identification of the surface sediments of Shatt Al-Arab River, Southern Iraq

Spatio-temporal variability and pollution sources identification of the surface sediments of Shatt Al-Arab River, Southern Iraq

Sulfate deprivation triggers high methane production in a disturbed and rewetted coastal peatland

Fine‐scale spatial homogenization of microbial habitats: a multivariate index of headwater wetland complex condition

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