The vulnerability of Indo-Pacific mangrove forests to sea-level rise
By C. Lovelock, D. Cahoon, Daniel A. Friess, G. Guntenspergen, K. Krauss, R. Reef, Kerrylee Rogers, Megan L. Saunders, F. Sidik, A. Swales and 3 more. Nature, 2015
787 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Sea-level rise can threaten the long-term sustainability of coastal communities and valuable ecosystems such as coral reefs, salt marshes and mangroves. Mangrove forests have the capacity to keep pace with sea-level rise and to avoid inundation through vertical accretion of sediments, which allows them to maintain wetland soil elevations suitable for plant growth. The Indo-Pacific region holds most of the world’s mangrove forests, but sediment delivery in this region is declining, owing to anthropogenic activities such as damming of rivers. This decline is of particular concern because the Indo-Pacific region is expected to have variable, but high, rates of future sea-level rise. Here we analyse recent trends in mangrove surface elevation changes across the Indo-Pacific region using data from a network of surface elevation table instruments. We find that sediment availability can enable mangrove forests to maintain rates of soil-surface elevation gain that match or exceed that of sea-level rise, but for 69 per cent of our study sites the current rate of sea-level rise exceeded the soil surface elevation gain. We also present a model based on our field data, which suggests that mangrove forests at sites with low tidal range and low sediment supply could be submerged as early as 2070.
Subfields: Earth-Surface Processes, Ecology, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9441520e7cebaa29a09feacf709aab3adc8b05cb
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Earth-Surface Processes
In Ecology
In Plant Science
Citations in the corpus
- Large-scale dieback of mangroves in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria: a severe ecosystem response, coincidental with an unusually extreme weather event (2017, background): “…to lightning strikes (Duke 2001; Amir 2012); shoreline erosion from severe cyclonic storms (Baldwin et al. 2001); shoreline erosion associated with sea level rise (Lovelock et al. 2015; and, depositional gain with mangrove islands and mud banks forming at river mouths (Asbridge et al. 2016).”
- How Plants Influence Resilience of Salt Marsh and Mangrove Wetlands to Sea-Level Rise (2020, background): “…their low-lying position at the landsea interface, coastal wetlands are particularly vulnerable to submergence and lateral erosion caused by rising sea level, as well as sea-level extremes and wave activity during storm surges (Nicholls 2004; Lovelock et al. 2015; Roman 2017; Leonardi et al. 2018).”
- Mangrove management for climate change adaptation and sustainable development in coastal zones (2018, neutral): “The permanence of stored carbon is a signi fi cant concern where pressures such as storms, SLR, and increased salinity endanger their survival.”