Connecting Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry in a Coastal Wetland: Feedbacks between Ecosystem Processes toward Predictive Understanding

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1759879
	Connecting Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry in a Coastal Wetland: Feedbacks between Ecosystem Processes toward Predictive Understanding
	Holly Michael
主持机构	University of Delaware
项目开始年	2018
	2018-08-01
项目结束日期	2020-07-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Standard Grant
项目经费	374175(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Coastal marshes play a critical role in the carbon cycle because they store vast amounts of carbon and regulate its movement between land, ocean, and atmosphere. Given their position at the land-sea margin, tidal marshes are threatened by rising seas, changing climatic conditions, and human pressures, which may release previously stored carbon and reduce their ability to store carbon in the future. The resulting impacts on the carbon cycle will depend on how changes in marsh hydrology affect the movement and chemical form of carbon, but these impacts are currently unknown. This study explores the impacts of changing hydrologic conditions on marsh water chemistry and links these to changes in carbon movement between tidal marshes and the coastal ocean. The research improves predictions of how carbon budgets may change in the future and enables managers to better protect the carbon storage potential of these fragile coastal ecosystems. The project also enhances education opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and enables the development of the St. Jones National Estuarine Research Reserve for course instruction and public outreach. Estuaries and marshes are globally important reservoirs of carbon and the critical points of interaction between land and oceans where carbon and nutrients are cycled. Despite their importance, the hydrological controls on biogeochemistry and, in turn, carbon dynamics of these ecosystems are relatively understudied, limiting the capacity to predict feedbacks with climate change and sea-level rise, to value marsh ecosystem services, and to manage human activities in these fragile landscapes. This project incorporates field, laboratory, and modeling approaches to elucidate how carbon dynamics in coastal marshes are driven by the spatially and temporally complex hydrology through interactions between physical and biogeochemical factors. This research (1) delineates the marsh based on hydrology, subsurface geochemistry, and biological activity, (2) establishes mechanistic linkages between changes in biological, geochemical, and hydrologic factors, and (3) combines mechanistic information with hydrological modeling to gain insights into longer timescale impacts of hydrologic change on redox zonations and associated carbon dynamics. Field analyses are conducted in a mid-Atlantic tidal marsh at the St. Jones National Estuarine Research Reserve in Dover, Delaware. This work fills gaps in the understanding of the hydrologic impacts on marsh biogeochemistry and identifies specific factors controlling carbon dynamics and fluxes between marshes and the coastal ocean. This integrated study promotes development of new conceptual and quantitative models to predict feedbacks between biogeochemistry and hydrologic change in coastal systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/72999
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Holly Michael.Connecting Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry in a Coastal Wetland: Feedbacks between Ecosystem Processes toward Predictive Understanding.2018.