Salt marshes along the coast of The Netherlands

Methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes from a temperate salt marsh: Grazing management does not alter Global Warming Potential

“…European salt marshes are often managed by livestock grazing to provide a suitable habitat for over-wintering bird species (Adam, 1990;Milsom et al, 2000;Chatters, 2004), however, the impact of this management on the GWP of this habitat is not well known. Grazing management is expected to have clear implications for GWP as soil moisture content, soil temperature and plant community composition, all key drivers of soil greenhouse gas emissions, often differ with grazing intensity (Bakker et al, 1993;Curry, 1994;Lambert, 2000). Despite the fact that salt marshes are by definition inter-tidal wetlands, their upper zones share many characteristics of semi-natural grasslands due to infrequent inundation.…”

“…Aerated grassland soils are large carbon stores, produce little CH 4 and emit significant amounts of N 2 O only under intensive grazing or fertiliser input regimes Allard et al, 2007;Del Grosso, 2010). Upper temperate salt marshes, common throughout Europe and characteristic of the vast area behind summer dykes in the Wadden Sea area of Germany (Bakker et al, 1993), may therefore have 113 a similar GWP to terrestrial grasslands during the summer months if tidal inundation is rare. CH 4 is produced by methanogenic archaea from either CO 2 or acetic acid when soil conditions are suitably anoxic (Denman et al, 2007).…”

Short-term and long-term facilitation of goose grazing by livestock in the Dutch Wadden Sea area

“…In our study area, the management goal is to increase biodiversity. Biodiversity is higher in moderately grazed areas opposed to intensively grazed areas (Bakker et al 1993). Moderate grazing leads to a higher structural diversity in the vegetation, which in turn supports higher numbers of invertebrates than intensively grazed sites (Olff and Ritchie 1998, WallisDeVries et al 1999, Balmer and Erhardt 2000, Dennis et al 2001, Woodcock et al 2005, Rickert et al 2012).…”

“…The averages shown in the figure, therefore, are a simplification of the underlying data, which may explain why, perceived large differences between the 1 horse ha 1 treatment and the 1 cattle ha 1 treatment in both autumn and spring are not significant. tall grass species Elytrigia atherica over a salt marsh (Bakker et al 1993). This would make salt marshes unsuitable for grazing geese.…”

“…Livestock grazing may also change the plant species composition of a salt marsh (Bakker et al 1993, Olff et al 1997 and with that the food availability for geese (Aerts et al 1996). Previous studies showed that the preferred food of geese differs between seasons.…”