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Robust assessments of ecosystem stability are critical for informing conservation and management decisions. Tidal marsh ecosystems provide vital services, yet are globally threatened by anthropogenic alterations to physical and biological processes. A variety of monitoring and modeling approaches have been undertaken to determine which tidal marshes are likely to persist into the future. Here, we conduct the most robust comparison of marsh metrics to date, building on two foundational studies that had previously and independently developed metrics for marsh condition. We characterized pairs of marshes with contrasting trajectories of marsh cover across six regions of the United States, using a combination of remote-sensing and field-based metrics. We also quantified decadal trends in marsh conversion to mudflat/open water at these twelve marshes. Our results suggest that metrics quantifying the distribution of vegetation across an elevational gradient represent the best indicators of marsh trajectories. The unvegetated to vegetated ratio and flood-ebb sediment differential also served as valuable indicators. No single metric universally predicted marsh trajectories, and therefore a more robust approach includes a suite of spatially-integrated, landscape-scale metrics that are mostly obtainable from remote sensing. Data from surface elevation tables and marker horizons revealed that degrading marshes can have higher rates of vertical accretion and elevation gain than more intact counterparts, likely due to longer inundation times potentially combined with internal recycling of material. A high rate of elevation gain relative to local sea-level rise has been considered critical to marsh persistence, but our results suggest that it also may serve as a signature of degradation in marshes that have already begun to deteriorate. This investigation, with rigorous comparison and integration of metrics initially developed independently, tested at a broad geographic scale, provides a model for collaborative science to develop management tools for improving conservation outcomes.

Climate change is altering naturally fluctuating environmental conditions in coastal and estuarine ecosystems across the globe. Departures from long-term averages and ranges of environmental variables are increasingly being observed as directional changes [e.g., rising sea levels, sea surface temperatures (SST)] and less predictable periodic cycles (e.g., Atlantic or Pacific decadal oscillations) and extremes (e.g., coastal flooding, marine heatwaves). Quantifying the short- and long-term impacts of climate change on tidal marsh seascape structure and function for nekton is a critical step toward fisheries conservation and management. The multiple stressor framework provides a promising approach for advancing integrative, cross-disciplinary research on tidal marshes and food web dynamics. It can be used to quantify climate change effects on and interactions between coastal oceans (e.g., SST, ocean currents, waves) and watersheds (e.g., precipitation, river flows), tidal marsh geomorphology (e.g., vegetation structure, elevation capital, sedimentation), and estuarine and coastal nekton (e.g., species distributions, life history adaptations, predator-prey dynamics). However, disentangling the cumulative impacts of multiple interacting stressors on tidal marshes, whether the effects are additive, synergistic, or antagonistic, and the time scales at which they occur, poses a significant research challenge. This perspective highlights the key physical and ecological processes affecting tidal marshes, with an emphasis on the trophic linkages between marsh production and estuarine and coastal nekton, recommended for consideration in future climate change studies. Such studies are urgently needed to understand climate change effects on tidal marshes now and into the future.

Tidal marshes are a key component of coastal seascape mosaics that support a suite of socially and economically valuable ecosystem services, including recreational opportunities (e.g., fishing, birdwatching), habitat for fisheries species, improved water quality, and shoreline protection. The capacity for tidal marshes to support these services is, however, threatened by increasingly widespread human impacts that reduce the extent and condition of tidal marshes across multiple spatial scales and that vary substantially through time. Climate change causes species redistribution at continental scales, changes in weather patterns (e.g., rainfall), and a worsening of the effect of coastal squeeze through sea level rise. Simultaneously, the effects of urbanization such as habitat loss, eutrophication, fishing, and the spread of invasive species interact with each other, and with climate change, to fundamentally change the structure and functioning of tidal marshes and their food webs. These changes affect tidal marshes at local scales through changes in plant community composition, complexity, and condition and at regional scales through changes in habitat extent, configuration, and connectivity. However, research into the full effects of these multi-scaled, interactive stressors on ecosystem service provision in tidal marshes is in its infancy and is somewhat geographically restricted. This hinders our capacity to quickly and effectively curb loss and degradation of both tidal marshes and the services they deliver with targeted management actions. We highlight ten priority research questions seeking to quantify the consequences and scales of human impacts on tidal marshes that should be answered to improve management and restoration plans.

Salt marshes of the northeastern United States are dynamic landscapes where the tidal flooding regime creates patterns of plant zonation based on differences in elevation, salinity, and local hydrology. These patterns of zonation can change quickly due to both natural and anthropogenic stressors, making tidal marshes vulnerable to degradation and loss. We compared several remote sensing techniques to develop a tool that accurately maps high- and low-marsh zonation to use in management and conservation planning for this ecosystem in the northeast USA. We found that random forests (RF) outperformed other classifier tools when applied to the most recent National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery, NAIP derivatives, and elevation data between coastal Maine and Virginia, USA. We then used RF methods to classify plant zonation within a 500-m buffer around coastal marsh delineated in the National Wetland Inventory. We found mean classification accuracies of 94% for high marsh, 76% for low marsh zones, and 90% overall map accuracy. The detailed output is a 3-m resolution continuous map of tidal marsh vegetation communities and cover classes that can be used in habitat modeling of marsh-obligate species or to monitor changes in marsh plant communities over time.

Tidal marshes are important ecological systems that are responding to sea level rise-driven changes in tidal regimes. Human development along the coastline creates barriers to marsh migration, moderating tidal marsh distributions. This study shows that in the Chesapeake Bay, USA an estuarine system with geographic and development variability, overall estuarine tidal marshes are projected to decline by approximately half over the next century. Tidal freshwater and oligohaline habitats, which are found in the upper reaches of the estuary and are typically backed by high elevation shorelines are particularly vulnerable. Due to their geological setting, losses of large extents of tidal freshwater habitat seem inevitable under sea level rise. However, in the meso/poly/euhaline zones that (in passive margin estuaries) are typically low relief areas, tidal marshes are capable of undergoing expansion. These areas should be prime management targets to maximize future tidal marsh extent. Redirecting new development to areas above 3 m in elevation and actively removing impervious surfaces as they become tidally inundated results in the maximum sustainability of natural coastal habitats. Under increasing sea levels and flooding, the future of tidal marshes will rely heavily on the policy decisions made, and the balance of human and natural landscapes in the consideration of future development.

Thin-layer sediment placement (TLP) is a promising management tool for enhancing tidal marsh resilience to rising seas. We conducted a 3-year experiment at eight US National Estuarine Research Reserves using a standardized implementation protocol and subsequent monitoring to evaluate effects of sediment placement on vegetation in low and high marsh, and compared this to control and reference plots. Sediments added to experimental plots were sourced from nearby quarries, were sandier than ambient marsh soils, and had more crab burrowing, but proved effective, suggesting that terrestrial sources can be used for tidal marsh restoration. We found strong differences among sites but detected general trends across the eight contrasting systems. Colonization by marsh plants was generally rapid following sediment addition, such that TLP plot cover was similar to control plots. While we found that 14-cm TLP plots were initially colonized more slowly than 7-cm plots, this difference largely disappeared after three years. In the face of accelerated sea-level rise, we thus recommend adding thicker sediment layers. Despite rapid revegetation, TLP plots did not approximate vegetation characteristics of higher elevation reference plots. Thus, while managers can expect fairly fast revegetation at TLP sites, the ultimate goal of achieving reference marsh conditions may be achieved slowly if at all. Vegetation recovered rapidly in both high and low marsh; thus, TLP can serve as a climate adaptation strategy across the marsh landscape. Our study illustrates the value of conducting experiments across disparate geographies and provides restoration practitioners with guidance for conducting future TLP projects.

Tidal marshes (including saltmarshes) provide remarkable value for many social (cultural, recreational) and environmental (fish production, water quality, shoreline protection, carbon sequestration) services. However, their extent, condition, and capacity to support these services are threatened by human development expansion, invasive species, erosion, altered hydrology and connectivity, and climate change. The past two decades have seen a shift toward working with managers to restore tidal marshes to conserve existing patches or create new marshes. The present perspective examines key features of recent tidal marsh restoration projects. Although optimism about restoration is building, not all marshes are the same; site-specific nuances require careful consideration, and thus, standard restoration designs are not possible. Restoration projects are effectively experiments, requiring clear goals, monitoring and evaluation, and adaptive management practices. Restoration is expensive; however, payment schemes for ecosystem services derived from restoration offer new ways to fund projects and appropriate monitoring and evaluation programs. All information generated by restoration needs to be published and easily accessible, especially failed attempts, to equip practitioners and scientists with actionable knowledge for future efforts. We advocate the need for a network of tidal marsh scientists, managers, and practitioners to share and disseminate new observations and knowledge. Such a network will help augment our capacity to restore tidal marsh, but also valuable coastal ecosystems more broadly.

Understanding the influence of future sea-level rise (SLR) on coastal ecosystems is improved by examining response of coastlines during historic periods of SLR. We evaluated stability and movement of the estuarine intertidal zone along eastern Gulf of Mexico, known as the “Big Bend” of Florida. This relatively undeveloped, low-energy coast is dominated by broad expanses of tidal marsh, providing an opportunity to observe unobstructed response of a coastal ecosystem to SLR. Features from nineteenth century topographic surveys and late twentieth century satellite imagery were compared. Relative change was calculated for intertidal area and lateral migration over 120 years, a period when tidal amplitude increased in addition to SLR. Loss of tidal marsh at the shoreline was −43 km², representing a 9 % loss to open water. At the same time, 82 km² of forest converted to marsh and 66 km² of forest converted to forest-to-marsh transitional habitat. The result was a net regional gain of 105 km² of intertidal area, an increase of 23 %, constituting a marine transgression of coastal lowlands. Forest retreat was lower at zones of high freshwater input, attributable to salinity moderation and was further complicated by coastal morphology and land-use practices. Shoreline migration may not represent full extent of habitat change resulting from SLR in regions with low coastal gradients. Forest retreat was consistent with what would be predicted by an inundation model; however, shoreline loss was considerably less, resulting in a net increase in intertidal area in this sediment-limited coast.

Australian tidal wetlands differ in important respects to better studied northern hemisphere systems, an artefact stable to falling sea levels over millennia. A network of Surface Elevation Table-Marker Horizon (SET-MH) monitoring stations has been established across the continent to assess accretionary and elevation responses to sea-level rise. This network currently consists of 289 SET-MH installations across all mainland Australian coastal states and territories. SET-MH installations are mostly in mangrove forests but also cover a range of tidal marsh and supratidal forest ecosystems. Mangroves were found to have higher rates of accretion and elevation gain than all the other categories of tidal wetland, a result attributable to their lower position within the tidal frame (promoting higher rates of accretion) higher biomass (with potentially higher rates of root growth), and lower rates of organic decomposition. While Australian tidal marshes in general show an increase in elevation over time, in 80% of locations, this was lower than the rate of sea-level rise. High rates of accretion did not translate into high rates of elevation gain, because the rate of subsidence in the shallow substrate increased with higher accretion rates (r2 = 0.87). The Australian SET-MH network, already in many locations spanning two decades of measurement, provides an important benchmark against which to assess wetland responses to accelerating sea-level rise in the decades ahead.

Background and aims Although the role of microbial iron respiration in tidal marshes has been recognized for decades, the effect of rhizosphere processes on dissimilatory ferric iron reduction (FeR) is poorly known. Herein, we examined the FeR surrounding the root zone of three tidal marsh plants. Methods Using in situ rhizoboxes, we accurately separated rhizobox soil as one rhizosphere zone, and three bulk soil zones. Dissimilatory and sulfidic-mediated FeR were quantified by accumulation of non-sulfidic Fe(II) and Fe sulfides over time, respectively. Results The rates of dissimilatory FeR attained 42.5 μmol Fe g−1 d−1 in the rhizosphere, and logarithmically declined by up to 19.1 μmol Fe g−1 d−1 in the outer bulk soil. The rates of sulfidicmediated FeR were less than 2 μmol Fe g−1 d−1 among all zones. Poorly crystalline Fe(III), DOC and DON, porewater Fe2+, and SO42− were all enriched in the rhizosphere, whereas non-sulfidic Fe(II) and Fe sulfides gradually accumulated away from the roots. Iron reducers (Geobacter, Bacillus, Shewanella, and Clostridium) had higher populations in the rhizosphere than in the bulk soil. Higher rates of dissimilatory FeR were observed in the Phragmites australis and Spartina alterniflora rhizoboxes than in the Cyperus malaccensis rhizoboxes. Conclusions The radial change pattern of dissimilatory FeR rates were determined by allocation of poorly crystalline Fe(III) and dissolved organic carbon. The interspecies difference of rhizosphere dissimilatory FeR was associated with the root porosity and aerenchyma of the tidal marsh plants.