Conference proceeding
New Jersey (USA) wetlands past, present and future; using sediment archives to inform and guide wetland protection, restoration and resilience
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, v 2016
Dec 2016
Abstract
Due to the rapid and pervasive loss of coastal wetland ecosystems and the enumerable services they provide, recent attention has been given to understand their resilience and response to natural and anthropogenic impacts. Knowledge gaps exist particularly regarding response times of wetland ecosystems to natural factors (storms and sea-level rise) and the appropriate indices or metrics of ecosystem health to be incorporated in management practices to achieve restoration goals. Here we present results from monitoring studies and stratigraphic investigations from marshes across the New Jersey, USA shoreline from Delaware Bay to Raritan Bay ( approximately 210 km of coastline that vary in degree of urbanization and anthropogenic disturbances) that address these limitations. In Delaware Bay, we identify a series of abrupt contacts (mud-peat couplets) from a sequence spanning the past two thousand years that we infer result from erosive storm events. By dating the base of these contacts and the return to high salt marsh peat, we are able to estimate the recovery time of marshes under varying rates of sea-level rise. In marshes from Great Sound to Raritan Bay, we use microfossils (e.g., foraminifera, diatoms) as indices of ecosystem health. We monitor the response of microfossils to natural (e.g., changes in salinity or inundation frequency from sea-level rise) and anthropogenic (e.g., nutrient loading) influences and apply quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstruction techniques to sediment archives to understand the relative influence of these factors on New Jersey wetlands over the past two thousand years. These results can be used to inform future coastal wetland restoration targets and as a model to develop site-specific goals in other regions.
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Details
- Title
- New Jersey (USA) wetlands past, present and future; using sediment archives to inform and guide wetland protection, restoration and resilience
- Creators
- Timothy Shaw - Rutgers University, Marine and Coastal Sciences New Brunswick, NJ USA United StatesJennifer ClearBen HortonNicole KhanDaria NikitinaMihaela Dolores EnacheMarina PotapovaDorina FrizzeraNicholas ProcopioChristopher VaneJennifer Sue WalkerAnonymous
- Publication Details
- American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, v 2016
- Conference
- American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (2016)
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Biodiversity, Earth, and Environmental Science (BEES); Biology; Diatom Herbarium
- Other Identifier
- 991019296793804721