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Populus spp. (cottonwood) and Salix spp. (willow), the dominant overstory trees in many western riparian forests, are disturbance-adapted species with short seed dispersal periods. Changes to flood cycles often lead to a decrease in recruitment success and survival of these species, and may increase the recruitment success of Tamarix spp. (saltcedar), an introduced riparian tree species that has...
Baltic coastal meadows are among the most threatened habitats in Europe, with most residual habitat being in Estonia and Sweden. We quantitatively related the changes in this habitat type in Estonia to the history of a key inhabitant — the natterjack toad (Bufo calamita Laur.). Between the 1930s and 2000s, 67% of 52 local populations of the toad disappeared; in coastal meadows, the decline was 91%...
The free surface flow Integrated Constructed Wetlands (ICW) concept explicitly combines the objectives of cleansing and managing water flow from farmyards with that of integrating the wetland infrastructure into the landscape and enhancing its biological diversity. This leads to system robustness and sustainability. Hydraulic dissipation, vegetation interception, and evapotranspiration create an additional...
Salt marshes created on dredge spoil were compared to natural marshes to evaluate the capacity of created marshes to perform carbon cycle functions. Several carbon cycle attributes were measured in eight created Spartina alterniflora Loisel salt marshes that ranged from one to 28 years, each paired with a nearby mature natural reference marsh. The attributes measured included gross primary production,...
Spartina alterniflora is unique among salt marsh macrophytes in its synthesis of dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP). One potential degradation product of DMSP is dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). The concentrations of DMSP and DMSO were determined for S. alterniflora plants collected from Mobile Bay, Alabama. Although the distribution of DMSO within healthy S. alterniflora tissues mirrored somewhat that of...
An intact hydrologic regime and the presence of peat forming vegetation are critical for the persistence of fen wetlands. Fen restoration projects often focus on reestablishing water tables near the soil surface, with little effort directed toward identifying historic hydrologic regimes, hydrologic modifications, and the sources of degradation. We used inconsistencies in the modern hydrologic regime...
The distribution of wetland breeding amphibians may be influenced by multiple habitat variables interacting at various scales. We applied a multi-scaled modeling approach to relate the presence and absence of carpenter frogs (Lithobates virgatipes), a species of conservation concern in Maryland, to several wetland and landscape characteristics. We also investigated relationships between wetland habitat...
Organic matter decomposition is an important ecological function in tidal flat ecosystems, and extracellular hydrolytic enzyme activities can be used as indices of this process. In this study, the spatial and temporal variations of enzyme activities were determined to establish easily measured variables that could be used to assess wetland functions. Seven sampling sites belonging to the hydrogeomorphic...
Since the 1970s, southwestern Georgia has seen significant decreases in annual stream flows and changes in seasonal rainfall patterns (i.e., slightly wetter winters and drier springs) that have implications for leaf breakdown processes in wetlands. In four separate study years (1999–2002), we examined leaf breakdown processes in two types of forested wetlands, floodplain and depressional. Using a...
An experimental water treatment plant was established to verify the effectiveness of constructed wetlands to improve water quality in the Venice Lagoon watershed. The wetland comprised three different subsystems, ranging from a riparian swamp to a marsh ecosystem. As a first step, monitoring was conducted over three years to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of the system. Here, we report an analysis...
The coastal plain ponds that occur within glacial deposits in the northeastern U.S. experience annual and inter-annual water level fluctuations. Periodic inundation and drying of coastal plain pond shorelines has led to the development of pondshore vegetation communities that are unusually diverse and restricted in distribution. Because water level fluctuations are the primary abiotic control on plant...
Accelerating the reestablishment of a mature, biotic community following a disturbance is a common goal of restoration ecology. In this study, we describe the relative successional status of a recently disturbed riparian seed bank when compared with less recently disturbed and undisturbed systems, and the short-term effects of restoration on seed bank development within the recently disturbed system...
Canyon riparian zone vegetation is vulnerable to effects of upstream river regulation. We studied box elder (Acer negundo) dominated canyon riparian forests intensively on the Green and Yampa rivers in Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, and extensively in four other major rivers of the upper Colorado River Basin to determine the effects of river regulation on riparian tree establishment patterns...
A low-lying coastal harvested bog in New Brunswick was inundated by a storm surge in January 2000 and commercially abandoned due to saltwater contamination. This study examines the hydrological processes controlling the seasonal and annual variability of salinity, and its long-term persistence. In the summer period there were two distinct hydrological zones characterized by differences in salinity,...
Headwater streams and wetlands with a combination of surface and subsurface flows are common features of many upland-forested watersheds. Unlike headwater stream reaches with continuous surface flow, the hydrology and ecology of subsurface stream reaches are poorly studied and not factored into existing wetland legislation. We assessed subsurface habitats and associated biota in a 435-m reach of a...
Nutrient patterns in wetlands are usually studied at a single sampling station and not for more than two or three hydrological years. This makes environmental assessment difficult, particularly when spatial heterogeneity and wetland responses depend upon water availability, as often occurs in Mediterranean wetlands. Furthermore, the spatial scale of environmental control of wetland dynamics is usually...
Height-biomass regressions were used to produce non-destructive aboveground biomass assessments for Spartina foliosa. We performed a statistical analysis of these regression models using data collected in Punta Banda Estuary, Baja California, Mexico. We found these models to be inconsistent with available data, on the basis of lack of homoscedasticity and randomness of residuals. The allometric scaling...
Horseshoe Lake, Alexander County, Illinois, is a shallow floodplain lake that lies at the northern range boundary of Taxodium distichum var. distichum (L.) L.C. Rich (bald cypress) in the Mississippi River Valley. About 35% of the lake surface is occupied by a flooded forest of Taxodium distichum and Nyssa aquatica L. (water tupelo). Pollen in two sediment cores was examined to determine the time...
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