For marshes where rates of sea level rise exceed about 3 mm/year, external sediment supply is critical to marsh survival. Although riverine sediment inputs to the Great Marsh are low, PIE LTER research has shown that marsh edge erosion during moderate intensity storms currently supplies enough sediment to maintain the marsh platform. However, with accelerating sea level rise, this will not be the case. Landscape scale studies of spatial and temporal changes (rather than relying on point measurements of platform accretion) provide more reliable information and allow better predictions to be made about future changes. Plum Island LTER is developing GIS methods to make more statistically robust comparisons between historical and current maps.
For Further Reading:
Morris, JT et al. 2013. Salt marsh primary production and its responses to relative sea level and nutrients in estuaries at Plum Island, Massachusetts, and North Inlet, South Carolina, USA. Oceanography. doi: 10.5670/oceanog.2013.48
Leonardi, N et al. 2016. A linear relationship between wave power and erosion determines salt-marsh resilience to violent storms and hurricanes. PNAS. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510095112
Hopkinson, CS et al. 2018. Lateral Marsh Edgy Erosion as a Source of Sediments for Vertical Marsh Accretion. J. Geophysical Research, Biogeosciences. doi: 10.1029/2017JG004358
Pontius Jr., RG. and M. Millones. 2011. Death to Kappa: birth of quantity disagreement and allocation disagreement for accuracy assessment. International Journal of Remote Sensing. doi: 10.1080/01431161.2011.552923
