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James RK, Keyzer LM, van de Velde SJ, Herman PMJ, van Katwijk MM, Bouma TJ. Climate change mitigation by coral reefs and seagrass beds at risk: How global change compromises coastal ecosystem services. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2023; 857:159576. [PMID: 36273559 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159576] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2022] [Revised: 10/14/2022] [Accepted: 10/15/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Seagrass meadows provide valuable ecosystem services of coastal protection and chemical habitat formation that could help mitigate the impact of sea level rise and ocean acidification. However, the intensification of hydrodynamic forces caused by sea level rise, in addition to habitat degradation threaten the provision of these ecosystem services. With quantitative field measurements of the coastal protection and chemical habitat formation services of seagrass meadows, we statistically model the relationships between hydrodynamic forces, vegetation density and the provision of these ecosystem services. Utilising a high-resolution hydrodynamic model that simulates end of the century hydrodynamic conditions and three scenarios of coral reef degradation (i.e., keep up, remain or loss) we quantify how the environmental conditions within a tropical bay will change given changes to the provision of ecosystem services. Our study shows that increasing hydrodynamic forces lead to a seafloor made up of a larger grain size that is increasingly unstable and more vulnerable to erosion. The loss of a fringing reef leads to larger hydrodynamic forces entering the bay, however, the 0.87 m increase in depth due to sea-level rise reduces the bed shear stress in shallower areas, which limits the change in the ecosystem services provided by the current benthic seagrass meadow. Loss of seagrass constitutes the greatest change in a bay ecosystem, resulting in the sediment surface where seagrass existed becoming unstable and the median sediment grain size increasing by 5-7 %. The loss of seagrass also leads to the disappearance of the unique fluctuating chemical habitat, which leaves the surrounding community vulnerable to ocean acidification. A reduction or complete loss of these ecosystem services would impact the entire community assemblage while also leaving the surrounding coastline vulnerable to erosion, thus exacerbating negative effects brought about by climate change.
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Affiliation(s)
- R K James
- Department of Estuarine & Delta Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Utrecht University, Yerseke, the Netherlands; Bgeosys, Department of Geoscience, Environment and Society, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
| | - L M Keyzer
- Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
| | - S J van de Velde
- Bgeosys, Department of Geoscience, Environment and Society, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; Operational Directorate Natural Environment, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
| | - P M J Herman
- Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands; Marine & Coastal Systems, Deltares, Delft, the Netherlands
| | - M M van Katwijk
- Department of Environmental Science, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - T J Bouma
- Department of Estuarine & Delta Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Utrecht University, Yerseke, the Netherlands; Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
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Ito M, Franz M, Barboza FR. Pathways to link biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: from monitoring to complex ecological interactions studies. COMMUNITY ECOL 2019. [DOI: 10.1556/168.2019.20.2.1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- M. Ito
- GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
| | - M. Franz
- GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
| | - F. R. Barboza
- GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
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