Managing for No Net Loss of Ecological Services: An Approach for Quantifying Loss of Coastal Wetlands due to Sea Level Rise

Abstract

Sea level rise has the potential to substantially alter the extent and nature of coastal wetlands and the critical ecological services they provide. In making choices about how to respond to rising sea level, planners are challenged with weighing easily quantified risks (e.g., loss of property value due to inundation) against those that are more difficult to quantify (e.g., loss of primary production or carbon sequestration services provided by wetlands due to inundation). Our goal was to develop a cost-effective, appropriately-scaled, model-based approach that allows planners to predict, under various sea level rise and response scenarios, the economic cost of wetland loss-with the estimates proxied by the costs of future restoration required to maintain the existing level of wetland habitat services. Our approach applies the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model to predict changes in wetland habitats over the next century, and then applies Habitat Equivalency Analysis to predict the cost of restoration projects required to maintain ecological services at their present, pre-sea level rise level. We demonstrate the application of this approach in the Delaware Bay estuary and in the Indian River Lagoon (Florida), and discuss how this approach can support future coastal decision-making.

Impacts of Coastal Reclamation on Natural Wetlands in Large River Deltas in China

“…The impact coefficients were generated by the ratios of wetland loss area to reclamation area. The maximum of low impact CRMI was calculated when the reclamation rate equaled to wetland accretion rate, the reclaimed area equaled to wetland area loss, and the percentage of impervious construction could be generated by the average value of the impervious construction percentage in the four river deltas during [1978][1979][1980][1981][1982][1983][1984][1985][1986][1987][1988][1989][1990] pay more attention to the original dynamics to maintain not only 'no net loss' but also 'net gain' in deltaic regions by controlling reclamation activities (Kassakian et al, 2017). The area of coastal wetland loss could be caused by coastal erosion, the sinking of deltas, and human activities (Syvitski et al, 2009;Murray et al, 2014).…”

Projecting Changes to Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystem Goods and Services—Models and Tools

“…Coastal and estuarine ecosystems host some of the most dynamic and productive habitats in the world (Costanza et al 1997;Costanza et al 2014), including: seagrass beds, mangroves, coral reefs, salt marshes, sandy beaches, and dunes (Barbier et al 2011). Each of these habitats provides a unique combination of benefits across the broad ecosystem goods and services (EGS) categories (i.e., provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services) set forth by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) (e.g., Marois and Mitsch 2015;Kassakian et al 2017). As environmental changes propagate through these ecosystems, the provision of important EGS may also be affected.…”

Are the Sundarbans, the World's largest mangroves region under threat?—An ecosystem‐based geospatial approach to assess changes past, present, and future in relation to natural and human‐induced factors

“…As per IPCC (2019), SLR increased by about 15 cm in the 20th century, now it is increasing more than twice as fast and could reach 30–60 or 60–110 cm according to low and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios, respectively (estimated for 2100). Of climate‐associated causes, SLR largely influences coastal wetlands and mangroves (Kassakian et al, 2017) and poses a huge threat to the resilience and the adaptive capacity of the mangroves (Setyaningsih et al, 2019). As SLR will not be uniform, its impact on mangrove ecosystems will also vary regionally.…”