A comprehensive field and modeling study indicates vulnerability of tidal wetlands to sea-level rise on the U.S. Pacific coast.

Coastal wetland plants are adapted to varying degrees of inundation. However, functional relationships between inundation and productivity are poorly characterized for most species. Determining species-specific tolerances to inundation is necessary to evaluate sea-level rise (SLR) effects on future marsh plant community composition, quantify organic matter inputs to marsh accretion, and inform predictive modeling of tidal wetland persistence. In 2 macrotidal estuaries in the northeast Pacific we grew 5 common species in experimental mesocosms across a gradient of tidal elevations to assess effects on growth. We also tested whether species abundance distributions along elevation gradients in adjacent marshes matched productivity profiles in the mesocosms. We found parabolic relationships between inundation and total plant biomass and shoot counts in Spartina foliosa and Bolboschoenus maritimus in California, USA, and in Carex lyngbyei in Oregon, USA, with maximum total plant biomass occurring at 38, 28, and 15% time submerged, respectively. However, biomass of Salicornia pacifica and Juncus balticus declined monotonically with increasing inundation. Inundation effects on the ratio of belowground to aboveground biomass varied inconsistently among species. In comparisons of field distributions with mesocosm results, B. maritimus, C. lyngbyei and J. balticus were abundant in marshes at or above elevations corresponding with their maximum productivity; however, S. foliosa and S. pacifica were frequently abundant at lower elevations corresponding with sub-optimal productivity. Our findings show species-level differences in how marsh plant growth may respond to future SLR and highlight the sensitivity of high marsh species such as S. pacifica and J. balticus to increases in flooding.

Abbreviations DCA = Detrended correspondence analysis; MHHW = mean higher high water; MLLW = mean lower low water; NMDS = Non-metric multidimensional scaling; NIS = non-indigenous species; NWI = National Wetlands Inventory; SLR = sea level rise. Nomenclature AbstractQuestions: What is the relative importance of topographic (elevation), edaphic (soil salinity, nitrogen and particle size) and hydrologic (estuarine river flow) gradients for variation in tidal wetland plant composition and diversity?Location: Four Oregon estuaries: a marine-dominated lagoon, two tidal-driven bays, and a river-dominated site. Methods:We surveyed species presence, cover and richness; and environmental factors (soil salinity, grain size, soil nitrogen and elevation) in plots in marsh and swamp. We assessed patterns of community structure and the relative importance of environmental gradients with hierarchical partitioning, ordination, species accumulation curves and path analysis.Results: The relative importance of measured environmental gradients on plant occurrence differed by species. Soil salinity or elevation explained the most variation in the majority of common species. Estuarine hydrology, soil nitrogen and soil clay content were usually of secondary or minor importance. Assemblage composition and species richness varied most strongly with tidal elevation. Local soil salinity also affected composition, but differences in estuarine hydrology had comparatively less effect on composition and richness. Higher-elevation wetlands supported larger species pools and higher plot-level richness; fresher wetlands had larger species pools than salt marsh but plot-level richness was relatively invariant to differences in soil salinity.Conclusions: Elevation and salinity tended to exert more influence on the vegetation structure of tidal wetlands than estuarine hydrology or other edaphic variables. With relative sea-level rise expected to increase both flooding intensity and salinity exposure in future wetlands, global climate change may lead to changes in species distributions, altered floristic composition and reduced plant species richness.