Multiple Stressors Influence Salt Marsh Recovery after a Spring Fire at Mugu Lagoon, CA
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WETLANDS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Multiple Stressors Influence Salt Marsh Recovery after a Spring Fire at Mugu Lagoon, CA Lauren N. Brown 1
&
Jordan A. Rosencranz 2 & Katherine S. Willis 1 & Richard F. Ambrose 2,3 & Glen M. MacDonald 1,2
Received: 22 February 2019 / Accepted: 30 July 2019 # The Author(s) 2019
Abstract This paper presents the first record of fire in Pacific coast salt marshes; the 1993 Green Meadows Fire and the 2013 Camarillo Springs Fire burned an area of Salicornia-dominated salt marsh at Point Mugu, CA. These fires inspire concern about resiliency of ecosystems not adapted to fire, already threatened by sea-level rise (SLR), and under stress from extreme drought. We monitored vegetation percent cover, diversity, and soil organic carbon (SOC) in burned and unburned areas of the salt marsh following the 2013 Camarillo Springs Fire and used remotely sensed Normalized Vegetation Difference Index (NDVI) analysis to verify the in situ data. Two years following the fire, vegetation percent cover in burned areas was significantly lower than in unburned areas, with dominant-species change in recovered areas, and NDVI was lower than pre-fire conditions. Multi-year disturbance, such as fire, presents challenges for salt marsh resilience and dependent species, especially in sites facing multiple stressors. With anticipated higher temperatures, increased aridity, extreme drought, and higher frequency fires becoming a reality for much of the Pacific coast, this study indicates that fire in Salicornia-dominated marshes is a vulnerability that will need to be addressed differently from other grass- or reed-dominated marsh systems. Keywords Fire . Recovery . Soil organic matter . NDVI . Salt marsh . Southern California
Introduction In the past 200 years population growth and urbanization caused the destruction or conversion of an estimated 75% of the salt marsh habitat in California (Stein et al. 2014). According to recent ecosystem vulnerability models that use projected rates of sea-level rise (SLR) from the IPCC RCP 8.5 scenarios (Stocker et al. 2013) up to 99% of vegetated salt marsh habitat may be converted to tidal flats by 2100 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01210-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Lauren N. Brown [email protected] 1
UCLA Geography Department, 1255 Bunche Hall, Box 951524, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
2
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, LaKretz Hall, 619 Charles E Young Dr E #300, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA
3
UCLA Environmental Health Sciences, 650 Charles Young Dr. S., 56-070 CHS Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
(Thorne et al. 2018; Doughty et al. 2019). These estimates do not include recent uncertainty surrounding continental ice sheet stability that could add an additional meter or more to sea-level rise projections in worst-case scenarios (Griggs et al. 2017) and result in more rapid loss of salt marsh habitat; nor do they take into account
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