Shifts in seston characteristics after inundation of a European coastal salt marsh

Abstract

A microbial assay and in‐source pyrolysis mass spectrometry were used to demonstrate a shift in the characteristics of sestonic particulate organic matter after tidal inundation of a coastal salt marsh in the southwest Netherlands. Analysis of seston samples collected from the main tidal creek of the marsh during a series of tidal cycles showed that an increase in microbial degradability accompanied a more pronounced lipid character of the seston after inundation. No evidence was found that the halophyte vegetation contributed to the efflux of particulate organic matter from the marsh, indicating that the vegetation of the poorly flooded European Atlantic salt marshes may be a minor contributor of particulate organic matter to adjacent bodies of water.

European intertidal marshes: a review of their habitat functioning and value for aquatic organisms

“…Only a very small amount is remineralised locally (Teal 1962, Odum & Heald 1975, Nixon 1980. In European marshes export of organic material is largely absent (Wolff et al 1979, Beeftink & Rozema 1988, Hemminga et al 1992. The dead marsh plants decay on the marsh surface and can only get washed into the water during the highest tides .…”

Fluxes of water, sediments, and biogeochemical compounds in salt marshes

“…brings estuarine organic matter to salt marshes via tidal creeks, and through biological, biogeochemical, and physical processes, the exported organic matter is altered quantitatively and qualitatively (Hemminga et al 1992(Hemminga et al , 1993. Initial studies on lateral fluxes of organic carbon mainly focused on the volume of carbon exchanged between salt marsh and estuary.…”

“…Two important environmental controls on the quantity and quality of salt marsh outwelling are light availability and extent of inundation (Hemminga et al 1992(Hemminga et al , 1993Kathilankal et al 2008). The inundation of the salt marsh determines the extent of the surface that may interact and provide DOC to estuarine water, while light availability impacts both in-situ production by autotrophs and transformations through photo-oxidation.…”

“…To identify the source of organic matter, researchers have used radioactive carbon and stable isotopic signatures of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur (Peterson and Howarth 1987;Peterson et al 1994;Raymond and Bauer 2001;Zhou et al 2006), stoichiometry (Hopkinson and Vallino 2005;Lønborg et al 2009), and biomarkers (Xu et al 2006;Volkman et al 2008). The studies of the fate of organic matter are based on biodegradability by using pyrolysis, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Hemminga et al 1992(Hemminga et al , 1993Klap et al 1996), and laboratory bioassays with dark incubation (del Giorgio and Davis 2003;Moran and Covert 2003). Photodegradation studies also track another Figure 7 The outwelling concept, in which nested subsystems exchange material in an estuarine-coastal landscape (after Childers et al 2000).…”

Caracterização das substâncias húmicas extraídas do solo do manguezal de Pai Matos (Cananéia, SP, BR) e de marismas da Espanha (Galícia e Valência)

“…No entanto, da mesma forma que às técnicas espectroscópicas, quando aplicada a MOS de ecossistemas estuarinos como os manguezais e as marismas, poucos estudos são encontrados (FOGEL et al, 1989;HEMMINGA et al, 1992;KLAP et al, 1996;LU et al, 2003).…”