Vulnerability of Louisiana's coastal wetlands to present-day rates of relative sea-level rise

Nature Communications

Volumn 8, Issue , 2017, Pages

  Jankowski, Krista L ^a   Törnqvist, Torbjörn E ^b   Fernandes, Anjali M ^a,b  

^a Tulane University   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ACCRETION; COASTAL WETLAND; DATA SET; ELEVATION; LAND SURFACE; SEA LEVEL CHANGE; SUBSIDENCE; VULNERABILITY;

LOUISIANA; MISSISSIPPI; SEA LEVEL RISE; WETLAND;

CHENIER PLAIN; LOUISIANA; MISSISSIPPI DELTA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 85015236623     PISSN: None     EISSN: 20411723     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14792     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Costanza, R. et al. Changes in the global value of ecosystem services. Glob. Enivron. Change 26, 152-158 (2014).
2. Davidson, N. How much wetland has the world lost? Long-Term and recent trends in global wetland area. Mar. Freshwater Res. 65, 931-941 (2014).
3. Bourne, J. Louisianas vanishing wetlands: Going, going. Science 289, 1860-1863 (2000).
4. Kirwan, M. L., Temmerman, S., Skeehan, E. E., Guntenspergen, G. R. & Fagherazzi, S. Overestimation of marsh vulnerability to sea level rise. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 253-260 (2016).
5. Couvillion, B. R. et al. Land area change in coastal Louisiana from 1932 to 2010: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3164, scale 1:265, 000, 12p (2011).
6. Blum, M. D. & Roberts, H. H. Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise. Nat. Geosci. 2, 488-491 (2009).
7. Day, J. W. et al. Pattern and process of land loss in the Mississippi Delta: A spatial and temporal analysis of wetland habitat change. Estuaries 23, 425-438 (2000).
8. Kolker, A. S., Allison, M. A. & Hameed, S. An evaluation of subsidence rates and sea-level variability in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L21404 (2011).
9. FitzGerald, D. M., Fenster, M. S., Argow, B. & Buynevich, I. V. Coastal impacts due to sea-level rise. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 36, 601-647 (2008).
10. Fagherazzi, S. et al. Numerical models of salt marsh evolution: Ecological, geormorphic, and climatic factors. Rev. Geophys. 50, RG1002 (2012).
11. Kirwan, M. L. & Megonigal, J. P. Tidal wetland stability in the face of human impacts and sea-level rise. Nature 504, 53-60 (2013).
12. Reed, D. J. The response of coastal marshes to sea-level rise: Survival or submergence? Earth Surf. Process. Landf. 20, 39-48 (1995).
13. Morris, J. T., Sundareshwar, P. V., Nietch, C. T., Kjerfve, B. & Cahoon, D. R. Responses of coastal wetlands to rising sea level. Ecology 83, 2869-2877 (2002).
14. Kirwan, M. L. & Guntenspergen, G. R. Feedbacks between inundation, root production, and shoot growth in a rapidly submerging brackish marsh. J. Ecol. 100, 764-770 (2012).
15. Cahoon, D. R., Reed, D. J. & Day, J. W. Estimating shallow subsidence in microtidal salt marshes of the southeastern United States: Kaye and Barghoorn revisited. Mar. Geol. 128, 1-9 (1995).
16. Kirwan, M. L. et al. Limits on the adaptability of coastal marshes to rising sea level. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L23401 (2010).
17. Ford, M. A. & Grace, J. B. Effects of vertebrate herbivores on soil processes, plant biomass, litter accumulation and soil elevation changes in a coastal marsh. J. Ecol. 86, 974-982 (1998).
18. Lane, R. R., Day, J. W. & Day, J. N. Wetland surface elevation, vertical accretion, and subsidence at three Louisiana estuaries receiving diverted Mississippi River water. Wetlands 26, 1130-1142 (2006).
19. Day, J. W. et al. Vegetation death and rapid loss of surface elevation in two contrasting Mississippi delta salt marshes: The role of sedimentation, autocompaction and sea-level rise. Ecol. Eng. 37, 229-240 (2011).
20. Cahoon, D. R., White, D. A. & Lynch, J. C. Sediment infilling and wetland formation dynamics in an active crevasse splay of the Mississippi River delta. Geomorphology 131, 57-68 (2011).
21. Lovelock, C. E. et al. The vulnerability of Indo-Pacific mangrove forests to sea-level rise. Nature 526, 559-565 (2015).
22. Webb, E. L. et al. A global standard for monitoring coastal wetland vulnerability to accelerated sea-level rise. Nat. Clim. Change 3, 458-465 (2013).
23. Steyer, G. D. et al. A proposed coast-wide reference monitoring system for evaluating wetland restoration trajectories in Louisiana. Environ. Monit. Assess. 81, 107-117 (2003).
24. Yu, S.-Y., Törnqvist, T. E. & Hu, P. Quantifying Holocene lithospheric subsidence rates underneath the Mississippi Delta. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 331-332, 21-30 (2012).
25. Wolstencroft, M., Shen, Z., Törnqvist, T. E., Milne, G. A. & Kulp, M. Understanding subsidence in the Mississippi Delta region due to sediment, ice, and ocean loading: Insights from geophysical modeling. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth 119, 3838-3856 (2014).
26. Karegar, M. A., Dixon, T. H. & Malservisi, R. A three-dimensional surface velocity field for the Mississippi Delta: Implications for coastal restoration and flood potential. Geology 43, 519-522 (2015).
27. Roberts, H. H. et al. Floods and cold front passages: impacts on coastal marshes in a river diversion setting (Wax Lake Delta area, Louisiana). J. Coast. Res. 31, 1057-1068 (2015).
28. Tweel, A. W. & Turner, R. E. Landscape-scale analysis of wetland sediment deposition from four tropical cyclone events. PLoS ONE 7, e50528 (2012).
29. Falcini, F. et al. Linking the historic 2011 Mississippi River flood to coastal wetland sedimentation. Nat. Geosci. 5, 803-807 (2012).
30. Meckel, T. A., ten Brink, U. S. & Williams, S. J. Current subsidence rates due to compaction of Holocene sediments in southern Louisiana. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L11403 (2006).
31. Törnqvist, T. E. et al. Mississippi Delta subsidence primarily caused by compaction of Holocene strata. Nat. Geosci. 1, 173-176 (2008).
32. Blum, M. D. & Roberts, H. H. The Mississippi delta region: past, present, and future. Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 40, 655-683 (2012).
33. Letetrel, C. et al. Estimation of vertical land movement rates along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico over the past decades. Cont. Shelf Res. 111, 42-51 (2015).
34. Penland, S. & Ramsey, K. E. Relative sea-level rise in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico: 1908-1988. J. Coast. Res. 6, 323-342 (1990).
35. Mitrovica, J. X., Gomez, N. & Clark, P. U. The sea-level fingerprint of West Antarctic collapse. Science 323, 753 (2009).
36. DeConto, R. M. & Pollard, D. Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise. Nature 531, 591-597 (2016).
37. Paola, C. et al. Natural processes in delta restoration: Application to the Mississippi Delta. Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 3, 67-91 (2011).
38. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) of Louisiana. 2016. Coastwide Reference Monitoring System-Wetlands Monitoring Data. Retrieved from Coastal Information Management System (CIMS) database. Available at: http://cims.coastal.louisiana.gov. Accessed on 15 April 2016.
39. Visser, J. M., Sasser, C. E., Chabreck, R. H. & Linscombe, R. G. The impact of a severe drought on the vegetation of a subtropical estuary. Estuaries 25, 1184-1195 (2002).
40. Cahoon, D. R. et al. High-precision measurements of wetland sediment elevation: II. The rod surface elevation table. J. Sediment. Res. 72, 734-739 (2002).
41. Folse, T. M. et al. A Standard Operating Procedures Manual for the Coast-Wide Reference Monitoring System-Wetlands: Methods for Site Establishment, Data Collection, and Quality Assurance/Quality Control p.228 (Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration. Baton Rouge, LA, USA, 2014).
42. Cahoon, D. R. & Lynch, J. C. Improved cryogenic coring device for sampling wetland soils. J. Sediment. Res. 66, 1025-1027 (1996).
43. Heinrich, P., Paulsell, R., Milner, R., Snead, J. & Peele, H. Investigation and GIS development of the buried Holocene-Pleistocene surface in the Louisiana coastal plain. p.140 Louisiana Geological Survey and Louisiana State University for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (2015).