Sediment and plant dynamics in saltmarshes pioneer zone: Puccinellia maritima as a key species?

Langlois, Estelle; Bonis, Anne; Bouzillé, Jan‐Bernard

doi:10.1016/s0272-7714(02)00185-3

Cited by 70 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In the literature, a few studies have addressed hummock formation in estuarine marshes [19,31] and marshes located within a bay [17,32]. In these studies, hummock formation occurred by active sediment trapping driven by Puccinellia maritima [17,32] or Spartina anglica [19,31]. This is in line with the results that we found that the hummocks in the pioneer zone were dominated by Puccinellia maritima (Table 1).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Many mainland and estuarine marshes have very high accretion rates, up to 40 mm¨year´1 [28][29][30]. In the literature, a few studies have addressed hummock formation in estuarine marshes [19,31] and marshes located within a bay [17,32]. In these studies, hummock formation occurred by active sediment trapping driven by Puccinellia maritima [17,32] or Spartina anglica [19,31].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sandy marshes in Europe have fine patterns at the scale of a few square meters in marsh morphology [16][17][18][19]. These patterns consist of a repetitive pattern of higher elevated, sandy hummocks covered with a thin fine-grained sediment layer surrounded by lower elevated depressions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamics of Small-Scale Topographic Heterogeneity in European Sandy Salt Marshes

Elschot

Bakker

2016

JMSE

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Heterogeneity can boost biodiversity, as well as increase the resilience of an ecosystem to changing environmental conditions; therefore, it is important to understand how topographic heterogeneity in ecosystems is formed. Sandy tidal marshes have a repetitive pattern of higher elevated hummocks surrounded by lower elevated depressions, representing topographic heterogeneity at the scale of a few square meters. The aims of this study were to determine when this topographic heterogeneity forms, how it is structured, and whether it persists during marsh development. The soil topography of marshes consists of coarse-grained sediment formed before marsh vegetation development, with an overlaying fine-grained sediment layer formed after initial marsh development. To gain insight into the formation of topographic heterogeneity, we studied the underlying soil topography of four European sandy marshes, where topographic heterogeneity at a scale of a few square meters was present. The differences in elevation between hummocks and depressions can either be caused by heterogeneity in the coarse-grained sediment or by heterogeneity in the top layer containing the fine-grained sediment. Our results showed that the largest percentage of elevational differences between hummocks and depressions could be attributed to heterogeneity in the underlying coarse-grained substratum. Therefore, we conclude that the patterns in all four marshes were primarily formed before marsh development, before fine-grained sediment was deposited on top of the coarse-grained sediment. However, a smaller percentage of the elevational difference between hummocks and depressions can also be explained by the presence of thicker fine-grained sediment layers on top of hummocks compared with depressions. This implies that marsh accretion rates were higher on hummocks compared with depressions. However, this result was limited to very early stages of marsh development, as marsh accretion rates estimated on marshes ranging between 15-and 120-years-old showed that depressions actually accreted sediments at a significantly faster rate than hummocks. Eventually, the patterns of heterogeneity stabilized and we found similar marsh accretion rates on hummocks and in depressions in the 120-year-old marsh, which resulted in the persistency of these topographic patterns.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamics of Small-Scale Topographic Heterogeneity in European Sandy Salt Marshes

Elschot

Bakker

2016

JMSE

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“…Initially, mean, median, and percentages of particle diameter classes of more than 16 and 63 μm of each sample were determined. As the correlation among these particle percentages was very high and previous studies used the median particle size in their research (Jigorel 2000, Langlois et al 2003, we also used the median particle size as soil texture characteristic.…”

Section: Soil Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental determinism versus biotic stochasticity in the appearance of plant species in salt-marsh succession

Erfanzadeh¹,

Pétillon²,

Maelfait³

et al. 2010

Plecevo

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Background and aims It is generally accepted that in terrestrial ecosystems the occurrence and abundance of plant species in late successional stages can be predicted accurately from prevailing soil conditions, whereas in early succession their presence is much more influenced by chance events (e.g. propagule availability). Late successional vegetation stages would therefore be deterministically structured, while early succession would be dominated by more stochastic features. To test this hypothesis in salt marsh conditions, we compared the effect of abiotic environmental factors on vegetation composition and probability of occurrence of individual species in two adjacent salt marshes, differing in age (i.e. successional stage). Material and methods In 2002, a new salt marsh was created on substrate devoid of plant diaspores in the nature reserve The Uzermonding (Nieuwpoort, Belgium). From 2002 onwards, primary colonization started on that sterile substrate by hydrochoric seed dispersal, induced by tidal water currents from an adjacent 5 ha relic of the old salt marsh. In 2005, three years after the start of the colonization process of the new salt marsh, vegetation and three abiotic environmental factors (soil texture, salinity and elevation) were recorded in a set of 155 releves on the new and old salt marsh. Key results In contrast to the general observation in other terrestrial ecosystems, the vegetation composition of the early successional stage of the new salt marsh appeared to be at least as much determined by the combined effect of the measured abiotic factors as that of the old salt marsh. As revealed by logistic regression the presence/absence of perennial species as well as annual species oldie young salt marsh could be well predicted by the measured abiotic variables. For the old salt marsh this also held for the perennial species, but not for the annual species. The stochastic appearance of gaps in the perennial vegetation cover appeared to be important for the establishment of annuals in the older salt marsh. Conclusion In the case of salt marsh succession, the generally accepted hypothesis of early successional stochasticity dominance versus late successional environmental determinism must be rejected

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“…salt marshes) or air (e.g. sand dunes) 33 (see, e.g., Baas, 2002;Langlois et al, 2003). However, the precise impact of different 34 vegetation types on terrestrial sediment cycles is still poorly understood.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation structure influences the retention of airfall tephra in a sub-Arctic landscape

Cutler

Bailey

Hickson

et al. 2016

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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1Vegetation cover mediates a number of important geomorphological processes. 2 However, the effect of different vegetation types on the retention of fine aeolian 3 sediment is poorly understood. We investigated this phenomenon, using the retention 4 of fine, pyroclastic material (tephra) from the 2011 eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano, 5Iceland, as a case study. We set out to quantify structural variation in different 6 vegetation types and to relate structural metrics to the thickness of recently deposited 7 volcanic ash layers in the sedimentary section. We utilised a combination of vegetation 8and soil surveys, along with photogrammetric analysis of vegetation structure. We 9 found that indices of plant community composition were a poor proxy for vegetation 10 structure and were largely unrelated to tephra thickness. However, structural metrics, 11 derived from photogrammetric analysis, were clearly related to variations in tephra 12 layer thickness at a landscape scale and tephra layers under shrub patches were 13 significantly thicker than those outside the shrub canopy. We therefore concluded that 14 a) vegetation cover was a critical factor in the retention of fine aeolian sediment for 15 deposit depths up to few centimetres and b) structural variation in vegetation cover 16 played a major role in determining the configuration of tephra deposits in the 17 sedimentary section. These findings have implications for the analysis of ancient 18 volcanic eruptions and archaeological/palaeoenvironmental reconstructions based on 19

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Sediment and plant dynamics in saltmarshes pioneer zone: Puccinellia maritima as a key species?

Cited by 70 publications

References 22 publications

Dynamics of Small-Scale Topographic Heterogeneity in European Sandy Salt Marshes

Dynamics of Small-Scale Topographic Heterogeneity in European Sandy Salt Marshes

Environmental determinism versus biotic stochasticity in the appearance of plant species in salt-marsh succession

Vegetation structure influences the retention of airfall tephra in a sub-Arctic landscape

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