Project Funding: 2011 - 2017

NRA: 2010 NASA: Climate and Biological Response: Research and Applications   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Climate change is fundamentally altering the planet's environment, including increased air and ocean temperatures, melting glaciers and icecaps, and rising sea levels. By altering the environment, climate change is likely to have pervasive but currently unknown impacts on the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Coastal zones are particularly sensitive to climate change given that they are generally within a few feet of sea level. Recent estimates call for a 33% loss of coastal wetlands, including salt marshes and mangroves, by 2080 due to rising sea levels. Coastal wetlands provide crucial ecosystem services, including protection from local flooding, filtration of terrestrial runoff, tourism, and provision of habitat for diverse marine vertebrates and invertebrates that support lucrative fisheries. Nearly 70% of the world’s population lives within 50 miles of the shoreline, thus the loss or degradation of wetland services is likely to have substantial impacts on human societies. Responses to climate change are predicted to be most severe along traditional transitional zones. Thus, we focus on the current and future displacement of temperate cordgrass marshes by eight species of invading mangrove trees from lower latitudes in southeastern North America. Cordgrass marshes are among the world's most productive ecosystems and support ecologically and economically important communities, yet in both North America and worldwide they are rapidly being replaced by tropical and subtropical mangroves. We hypothesize that interactions among increased air and ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, and nutrient over-enrichment are shifting cordgrass marshes to mangrove forests and causing substantial impacts on the structure and functioning of coastal wetlands. Our primary objectives are to: 1) link climatic and biophysical observations to changes in the distribution and composition of salt marsh and mangrove wetlands across spatially variable landscapes; 2) determine impacts on key ecosystem services; and 3) model future distributions of salt marsh and mangrove wetlands. First, to create historical time-series of mangrove and salt marsh distributions from the 1940’s to the present (corresponding with the most rapid increases in global temperature), we will use high resolution aerial photography along with remotely-sensed multispectral high-resolution satellite (IKONOS, QuickBird) and Landsat imagery to recreate historical patterns of shoreline vegetation. In combination with precision GPS surveying of fixed landmarks, we can correlate ecological shifts in wetland vegetation to temperature records, sea level, and environmental disturbance (both anthropogenic and natural). Spatial analysis using GIS tools will also permit development of predictive sea-level rise scenarios (east-west continuum) and ecosystem-replacement scenarios in response to global warming (north-south continuum). Importantly, we will be able to complete remote-sensing analyses wherever mangroves exist worldwide, allowing us to rapidly document global patterns of coastal shoreline transformation. To determine how mangrove expansion into salt marshes affects ecosystem services, we will conduct faunal and vegetation sampling along a salt marsh-mangrove chronosequence. Standard community statistics will be used in conjunction with stable isotopic analysis to determine differences in food web structure and nutrient dynamics. Finally, we will combine new data with our existing datasets on mangrove demography to parameterize spatially-explicit, individual-based models (KiWi) simulating the growth, establishment, and death of individual trees for each invading mangrove species. These models will allow us to predict the future structure, composition, and function of mangrove wetlands in a changing climate.

Publications:

Cavanaugh, K. C., Dangremond, E. M., Doughty, C. L., Williams, A. P., Parker, J. D., Hayes, M. A., Rodriguez, W., Feller, I. C. 2019. Climate-driven regime shifts in a mangrove-salt marsh ecotone over the past 250 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116(43), 21602-21608. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1902181116

Cavanaugh, K. C., Kellner, J. R., Forde, A. J., Gruner, D. S., Parker, J. D., Rodriguez, W., Feller, I. C. 2013. Poleward expansion of mangroves is a threshold response to decreased frequency of extreme cold events. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111(2), 723-727. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1315800111

Cavanaugh, K. C., Osland, M. J., Bardou, R., Hinojosa-Arango, G., Lopez-Vivas, J. M., Parker, J. D., Rovai, A. S., Morueta-Holme, N. 2018. Sensitivity of mangrove range limits to climate variability. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 27(8), 925-935. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12751

Cavanaugh, K. C., Parker, J. D., Cook-Patton, S. C., Feller, I. C., Williams, A. P., Kellner, J. R. 2015. Integrating physiological threshold experiments with climate modeling to project mangrove species' range expansion. Global Change Biology. 21(5), 1928-1938. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12843

Coldren, G. A., Barreto, C. R., Wykoff, D. D., Morrissey, E. M., Langley, J. A., Feller, I. C., Chapman, S. K. 2016. Chronic warming stimulates growth of marsh grasses more than mangroves in a coastal wetland ecotone. Ecology. 97(11), 3167-3175. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.1539

Coldren, G. A., Langley, J. A., Feller, I. C., Chapman, S. K. 2018. Warming accelerates mangrove expansion and surface elevation gain in a subtropical wetland. Journal of Ecology. 107(1), 79-90. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.13049

Dangremond, E. M., Feller, I. C. 2016. Precocious reproduction increases at the leading edge of a mangrove range expansion. Ecology and Evolution. 6(14), 5087-5092. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2270

Doughty, C. L., Langley, J. A., Walker, W. S., Feller, I. C., Schaub, R., Chapman, S. K. 2015. Mangrove Range Expansion Rapidly Increases Coastal Wetland Carbon Storage. Estuaries and Coasts. 39(2), 385-396. DOI: 10.1007/s12237-015-9993-8

Feller, I. C., Berger, U., Chapman, S. K., Dangremond, E. M., Dix, N. G., Langley, J. A., Lovelock, C. E., Osborne, T. Z., Shor, A. C., Simpson, L. T. 2022. Nitrogen Addition Increases Freeze Resistance in Black Mangrove (Avicennia germinans) Shrubs in a Temperate-Tropical Ecotone. Ecosystems. 26(4), 800-814. DOI: 10.1007/s10021-022-00796-z

Feller, I. C., Dangremond, E. M., Devlin, D. J., Lovelock, C. E., Proffitt, C. E., Rodriguez, W. 2015. Nutrient enrichment intensifies hurricane impact in scrub mangrove ecosystems in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, USA. Ecology. 96(11), 2960-2972. DOI: 10.1890/14-1853.1

Johnston, C. A., Gruner, D. S. 2018. Marine fauna sort at fine resolution in an ecotone of shifting wetland foundation species. Ecology. 99(11), 2546-2557. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2505

Nathan, M., Gruner, D. S. 2023. Sustained mangrove reproduction despite major turnover in pollinator community composition at expanding range edge. Annals of Botany. DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcad085

Rodriguez, W., Feller, I. C., Cavanaugh, K. C. 2016. Spatio-temporal changes of a mangrove-saltmarsh ecotone in the northeastern coast of Florida, USA. Global Ecology and Conservation. 7, 245-261. DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2016.07.005

Simpson, L. T., Osborne, T. Z., Feller, I. C. 2017. Establishment and Biomass Allocation of Black and Red Mangroves: Response to Propagule Flotation Duration and Seedling Light Availability. Journal of Coastal Research. 335, 1126-1134. DOI: 10.2112/jcoastres-d-16-00108.1

Simpson, L. T., Osborne, T. Z., Feller, I. C. 2018. Wetland Soil Co2 Efflux Along a Latitudinal Gradient of Spatial and Temporal Complexity. Estuaries and Coasts. 42(1), 45-54. DOI: 10.1007/s12237-018-0442-3

Simpson, L. T., Stein, C. M., Osborne, T. Z., Feller, I. C. 2019. Mangroves dramatically increase carbon storage after 3 years of encroachment. Hydrobiologia. 834(1), 13-26. DOI: 10.1007/s10750-019-3905-z

Williams, A. A., Eastman, S. F., Eash-Loucks, W. E., Kimball, M. E., Lehmann, M. L., Parker, J. D. 2014. Record Northernmost Endemic Mangroves on the United States Atlantic Coast with a Note on Latitudinal Migration. Southeastern Naturalist. 13(1), 56-63. DOI: 10.1656/058.013.0104

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Biological Diversity & Ecological Conservation (BDEC) Project Profile