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Future of tidal wetlands depends on coastal management

Computational simulations suggest that future losses of tidal wetlands attributable to sea-level rise could be greatly offset by the landward advance of these ecosystems into newly sea-inundated areas.
  1. Jonathan D. Woodruff

    1. Jonathan D. Woodruff is in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA.

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Coastal communities around the globe depend on tidal marshes and mangroves for the diverse ecological, economic and flood-mitigating services they provide. These relatively flat wetland systems (Fig. 1) commonly reside just above mean sea level, making them one of the ecosystems most at risk of being drowned by rising sea levels. But tidal wetlands will not disappear without a fight. Writing in Nature, Schuerch et al.1 present global-scale modelling that suggests that tidal wetlands are less vulnerable to sea-level rise than was thought. However, the scale of future wetland loss or gain depends greatly on the degree to which coastal communities accept or prevent the landward advances of these living coastal systems into newly inundated areas.

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Nature 561, 183-185 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06190-x

References

  1. Schuerch, M. et al. Nature 561, 231–234 (2018).

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  2. Blankespoor, B., Dasgupta, S. & Laplante, B. Ambio 43, 996–1005 (2014).

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  3. Spencer, T. et al. Glob. Planet. Change 139, 15–30 (2016).

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