Modeled Tradeoffs between Developed Land Protection and Tidal Habitat Maintenance during Rising Sea Levels

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 10; p. e0164875
• Main Authors: Cadol, Daniel, Elmore, Andrew J, Guinn, Steven M, Engelhardt, Katharina A M, Sanders, Geoffrey
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 27-10-2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Abundance; Accretion; Analysis; Biodiversity; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomass; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Deposition; Earth Sciences; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Ecosystem; Elevation; Global Warming; Habitats; Hydrology; Ice sheets; Land development; Marine; Migration; Models, Theoretical; National parks; Natural Resources; Oceans and Seas; Protection and preservation; Resilience; Rivers; Salt marshes; Sea level; Sea level rise; Sediments (Geology); Shore protection; Shorelines; Species diversity; Swamps; Tidal marshes; Tidal Waves; Wetlands; Potomac River; United States > US; Virginia; USA, Maryland, Potomac R; USA, Washington D.C
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164875

Tidal habitats host a diversity of species and provide hydrological services such as shoreline protection and nutrient attenuation. Accretion of sediment and biomass enables tidal marshes and swamps to grow vertically, providing a degree of resilience to rising sea levels. Even if accelerating sea level rise overcomes this vertical resilience, tidal habitats have the potential to migrate inland as they continue to occupy land that falls within the new tide range elevations. The existence of developed land inland of tidal habitats, however, may prevent this migration as efforts are often made to dyke and protect developments. To test the importance of inland migration to maintaining tidal habitat abundance under a range of potential rates of sea level rise, we developed a spatially explicit elevation tracking and habitat switching model, dubbed the Marsh Accretion and Inundation Model (MAIM), which incorporates elevation-dependent net land surface elevation gain functions. We applied the model to the metropolitan Washington, DC region, finding that the abundance of small National Park Service units and other public open space along the tidal Potomac River system provides a refuge to which tidal habitats may retreat to maintain total habitat area even under moderate sea level rise scenarios (0.7 m and 1.1 m rise by 2100). Under a severe sea level rise scenario associated with ice sheet collapse (1.7 m by 2100) habitat area is maintained only if no development is protected from rising water. If all existing development is protected, then 5%, 10%, and 40% of the total tidal habitat area is lost by 2100 for the three sea level rise scenarios tested.