Logo image
Back
Use of historical isoscapes to develop an estuarine nutrient baseline
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Use of historical isoscapes to develop an estuarine nutrient baseline

Lena Champlin, Andrea Woolfolk, Autumn Oczkowski, Audrey Rittenhouse, Andrew Gray, Kerstin Wasson, Farzana Rahman, Paula Zelanko, Nadine Quintana Krupinski, Rikke Jeppesen, …
Frontiers in Marine Science
06 Sep 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1257015
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2010.4802.1View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open
url
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1257015View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Agricultural pollution Algae Anthropocene Baseline studies Brackishwater environment Carbon Coastal zone Cores Cultivated lands Denitrification Environmental degradation Estuaries Estuarine dynamics Eutrophication Fertilizer application Fertilizers Fossil fuels History Inlets (waterways) Isotopes Metabolism Nitrates Nitrogen Nitrogen sources Nutrient concentrations Nutrient dynamics Nutrient loading Nutrient pollution Nutrients Pollution Population growth Runoff Sediment Sediments Stable isotopes Temporal variations Water quality Watersheds
Coastal eutrophication is a prevalent threat to the healthy functioning of ecosystems globally. While degraded water quality can be detected by monitoring oxygen, nutrient concentrations, and algal abundance, establishing regulatory guidelines is complicated by a lack of baseline data (e.g., pre-Anthropocene). We use historical carbon and nitrogen isoscapes over ~300 years from sediment cores to reconstruct spatial and temporal changes in nutrient dynamics for a central California estuary, Elkhorn Slough, where development and agriculture dramatically enhanced nutrient inputs over the past century. We found strong contrasts between current sediment stable isotopes and those from the recent past, demonstrating shifts exceeding those in previously studied eutrophic estuaries and substantial increases in nutrient inputs. Comparisons of contemporary with historical isoscapes also revealed that nitrogen sources shifted from a historical marine-terrestrial gradient with higher d 15 N near the inlet to amplified denitrification at the head and mouth of the modern estuary driven by increased N inputs. Geospatial analysis of historical data suggests that an increase in fertilizer application -rather than population growth or increases in the extent of cultivated land -is chiefly responsible for increasing nutrient loads during the 20 th century. This study demonstrates the ability of isotopic and stoichiometric maps to provide important perspectives on long-term shifts and spatial patterns of nutrients that can be used to improve management of nutrient pollution.

Metrics

11 Record Views
5 citations in Web of Science
3 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#14 Life Below Water

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
Marine & Freshwater Biology
Logo image