In situ experimental decomposition studies in estuaries: A comparison of Phragmites australis and Fucus vesiculosus

Potential effects of tidal flat variations on decomposition and nutrient dynamics of Phragmites australis , Suaeda salsa and Suaeda glauca litter in newly created marshes of the Yellow River estuary, China

“…Thus, higher activities of microorganisms and benthic macro-invertebrates in LM, to a great extent, stimulated the decomposition of the three halophytes. Similar result was drawn by Lopes et al (2011) who found that the decomposition rate of Fucus vesiculosus was much higher in the areas of higher salinity, which was explained by the adaptation of microorganisms acting to saline conditions. Secondly, the co-variations and interactions of salinity and other abiotic factors might greatly affect the decomposition of the three halophytes.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that the inverse relationship generally could be found between salinity and litter decay rates (Reice and Herbst, 1982;Hemminga et al, 1991;Rietz and Haynes, 2003;Sardinha et al, 2003;Roache et al, 2006;Quintino et al, 2009;Lopes et al, 2011). However, our study drawn an opposite result.…”

“…Considerable efforts have been conducted in the past two decades to explore the litter decomposition in different coastal marsh ecosystems, especially in estuarine marshes (Anesio et al, 2003;Du Laing et al, 2006;Menéndez and Sanmartí, 2007;Menéndez, 2008), salt marshes (Mendelssohn et al, 1999;Bouchard and Lefeuvre, 2000;Pereira et al, 2007;Quintino et al, 2009;Simões et al, 2011;Lopes et al, 2011), mangrove swamps (Robertson, 1988;Tam et al, 1998;Dick and Osunkoya, 2000;Holmboe et al, 2001;Nielsen and Andersen, 2003;Ramos e Silva et al, 2007;Sánchez-Andrés et al, 2010;Keuskamp et al, 2015), and coastal lagoons (Scarton et al, 2002;Dye, 2006;Menéndez, 2009;Costantini et al, 2009). In general, these studies mainly focused on discussing the characteristics of litter decomposition and the roles of abiotic (such as temperature, nutrient enrichment, salinity gradient, and tidal flooding and duration) and biotic factors (such as fungi, meiofauna, free and attached microorganisms) on decomposition.…”

Apport d’une étude pluridisciplinaire des débris végétaux dans l’estuaire de la Gironde à la compréhension des phénomènes de colmatage du circuit de refroidissement du Centre Nucléaire de Production d’Électricité du Blayais

“…Ces dernières, en plus des paramètres biotiques et abiotiques liés au milieu, influencent le temps de transformation vers leur produit de dégradation. L'étude de la cinétique de dégrada-tion des feuilles, basée sur la technique litter-bag (Chauvet, 1987 ;Gessner & Chauvet, 2002 ;Gessner et al, 1999 ;Lecerf et al, 2007 ;Lopes et al, 2011 ;Mateo & Romero, 1996 ;Montemayor et al, 2011 ;Quintino et al, 2009 ;Sangiorgio et al, 2008) a été conduite pour la première fois dans un estuaire macrotidal hyper-turbide (Fuentes-Cid et al, 2013) en vue de comprendre comment le matériel foliaire transféré des bassins versants réagit dans un environnement spécifique et fluctuant tel que le système fluvio-estuarien de la Gironde (présence du bouchon vaseux et de forts courants des eaux).…”

Home advantage? Decomposition across the freshwater-estuarine transition zone varies with litter origin and local salinity

“…Such mismatch would lead to direct effects on breakdown rates, or indirectly affect decomposition via changes in the associated detritivore assemblage, or a combination of both. To date, only few studies have explicitly examined how changes in local salinity and macrofauna affects detritus breakdown although those that do (Lettice et al, 2011;Lopes et al, 2011;Bierschenk et al, 2012) report that decomposition rates varied according to salinity gradients and that detritus originating from without the local system decomposed more slowly. Moreover, the composition of the associated detritivore community changed along the salinity gradient (but see Lopes et al, 2013).…”