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Global warming impacts on CT salt marsh ecosystems and consequent effects on salt marsh vulnerability to sea level rise.

Coastal salt marsh ecosystems provide crucial ecosystem services including fisheries production, storm surge abatement, and pollutant removal. They also are aesthetically significant ecosystems, positively impacting quality of life and coastal economy. Over 80% of coastal salt marshes in Southern New England have been lost to development, and the remaining marshes are being impacted by human activities to varying degrees. In particular, global warming and its effects of sea level rise are among the most important threats to coastal salt marsh ecosystems today. To keep pace with sea level rise, salt marshes must vertically accrete and/or migrate landward. Global warming poses a unique threat because it not only leads to accelerated sea level rise, but it may also indirectly impact accretion rates by slowing sediment accumulation as a consequence of changes in salt marsh productivity. If salt marshes are unable to keep pace with sea level rise through vertical accretion, they must then migrate landward or be lost, however this ability to migrate is constrained by the state of the surrounding land cover. Thus, a predictive understanding of how coastal salt marsh ecosystems will be impacted by and respond to global warming and sea level rise requires a comprehensive understanding of the controls of vertical accretion and limits to migration.

Given the many challenges that global warming and accelerated sea level rise poses for coastal marsh ecosystems and communities, the need for innovative solutions that couple scientific understanding with long-term planning is essential. Towards this end, our interdisciplinary research team (Alexander Felson, Peter Raymond, Karen Seto, and Ellen Thomas) proposes to initiate salt marsh research at multiple spatial and temporal scales to inform the development of ecosystem-based tools for management of coastal salt marsh ecosystems. This research will lay the groundwork for achieving our long-term goal of developing a ÒCoastal Resilience PlanÓ for Connecticut. With funding from the Yale Climate and Energy Institute, we plan to initiate the first phase of our research program, which includes a novel combination of site-level research, remote sensing analyses, and community outreach activities. Specifically, the site-based research will include the first experimental examination of the impacts of warming on Long Island Sound coastal salt marsh productivity and accretion, coupled with paleo-ecological studies assessing historic accretion rates and sea level rise. Remote sensing data analyses will be used to map and categorize existing coastal salt marsh in CT in the context of surrounding land cover. Using long-term Landsat and in situ data, marshes will be categorized based on adjacent land uses, historic salt marsh locations, topography, etc. and organized based on future adaptability. This categorization of extant salt marshes coupled with the site-based research will be the first step in establishing a spatial and science-based prioritization of existing conditions along the CT coastline. Our long-term goals are to develop these categories over time to serve as science-based land types for future research and planning purposes, and we will engage the scientific community and decision makers though all stages of our research to ensure these products meet research and planning goals. Collectively, our site-based research and large-scale assessment of coastal marsh conditions will build the necessary foundation for increasing our synthetic understanding of responses of coastal salt marshes to forecast warming and sea level rise and for guiding an integrated salt marsh ecosystem management plan for Connecticut.

Current Initiatives