Micro-Topography Manipulations Facilitate Suaeda Salsa Marsh Restoration along the Lateral Gradient of a Tidal Creek
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WETLANDS RESTORATION
Micro-Topography Manipulations Facilitate Suaeda Salsa Marsh Restoration along the Lateral Gradient of a Tidal Creek Dawei Wang 1 & Junhong Bai 1
&
Wei Wang 1 & Xu Ma 1 & Yanan Guan 1 & Chuanhui Gu 1 & Shuyan Zhang 2 & Feng Lu 2
Received: 30 January 2020 / Accepted: 6 May 2020 # Society of Wetland Scientists 2020
Abstract Topographic heterogeneity provides a potential opportunity for seedling recruitment in the disturbance-dynamic ecosystem. Micro-topography manipulation is the typical way to imitate or recover the natural topographic heterogeneity for the degraded salt marsh restoration. However, it is still not clear how different micro-topographic structures work along the lateral gradient of a tidal creek. In this study, we performed three micro-topographic treatments, i.e., hollow topography, fine and coarse biotic grille structures, to restore the degraded Suaeda salsa wetlands. The results showed that the effectiveness of micro-topography restorations varied with structures and elevation levels. The hollow topography performed well in high marshes by relieving salinity stress and enhancing seeds retention. Moreover, in middle and low marshes, fine biotic grille structure improved the seeds retention and soil conditions better, including soil salinity and moisture, which were critical physico-chemical factors for Suaeda salsa biomass restoration according to redundancy analysis. In contrast, coarse biotic grille structure showed little significance on Suaeda salsa restoration. The findings of this work emphasized that seeds retention and post local soil conditions were significant aspects for salt marsh restoration. Meanwhile, it provided an alternative design for micro-topographic structures by native biotic materials in the complex and dynamic salt marshes. Keywords Micro-topography . Recruitment . Seed retention . Soil conditions . Biotic grille
Introduction Coastal salt marshes have attracted extensive attention due to their valuable ecosystem services, including high primary productivity, carbon sequestration (Bai et al. 2016), habitats offering and shoreline protection (Temmerman et al. 2013; Leonardi et al. 2018). And they are considered as critical zones for the balance of ecological protection and social-economic development due to extremely rich biodiversity and vulnerability (Mitsch and Gosselink 2015). However, coastal salt marshes are suffering severe shrink and degradation under the pressure of sea level rise in relation to climate warming and anthropogenic activities, such as urban constructions, agricultural
* Junhong Bai [email protected] 1
State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
2
Administration of National Nature Reserve of the Yellow River Delta, Dongying 257091, Shandong, China
reclamation, and resources exploitation (Kirwan and Megonigal 2013; Jiang et al. 2015). Especially, local artificial constructions blocked the hydrological connectivity and propagule dispersal, whi
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