Abstract
Salt marsh is an important transitional zone among terrestrial, riverine, and marine ecosystems and is a productive habitat that interacts extensively with adjacent landscape elements of estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Nowadays, in addition to various human activities, a variety of natural processes induce changes in salt marshes. This study aims to provide background information to restore disturbed salt marshes and to propose their ecological restoration using seed banks. The study area is a prepared area for the Gwangyang Container Port located in the southern Korea. This area was formed by accumulating mud soils dredged from the bottom of the forward sea. This land was created in a serial process of preparing the Gwangyang container port and the salt marsh was passively restored by seeds buried in mud soil dredged from seabed. As a result of stand ordination based on vegetation data collected from the land, stands were arranged according to tolerance to salinity in the order of <TEX>$Suaeda$</TEX> <TEX>$maritima$</TEX>, <TEX>$Salicornia$</TEX> <TEX>$europaea$</TEX>, and <TEX>$Phragmites$</TEX> <TEX>$communis$</TEX> communities on the Axis 1. Landscape structure of the projected area was analyzed as well. Edges of the projected area were divided from the marginal waterway by the dike. Four types of vegetation appeared on the dike: <TEX>$Alnus$</TEX> <TEX>$firma$</TEX> plantation, <TEX>$Robinia$</TEX> <TEX>$pseudoacacia$</TEX> plantation, <TEX>$Lespedeza$</TEX> <TEX>$cyrtobotrya$</TEX> plantation, and grassland. In the more internal areas, two types of vegetation sequences appeared: <TEX>$Aster$</TEX> <TEX>$tripolium$</TEX> community-<TEX>$Suaeda$</TEX> <TEX>$glauca$</TEX> community-<TEX>$Salicornia$</TEX> <TEX>$europaea$</TEX> community sequence and <TEX>$Aster$</TEX> <TEX>$tripolium$</TEX> community-<TEX>$Suaeda$</TEX> <TEX>$maritima$</TEX> community-<TEX>$S.$</TEX> <TEX>$europaea$</TEX> community sequence. Mixed community showed the highest species diversity (H' = 0.86) and <TEX>$S.$</TEX> <TEX>$europaea$</TEX> community showed the lowest (H' = 0.0). Evenness is the highest in Mixed community (J' = 2.26) and the lowest in <TEX>$S.$</TEX> <TEX>$maritime-S.$</TEX> <TEX>$europaea$</TEX> community (J' = 0.0). Several plant communities were successfully established on the land created by mud soil dredged from the bottom of Gwangyang Bay. Moreover, community diversity in this area approached a similar level with those from other studies involving natural salt marshes. Therefore, restoration effect based on community diversity obtained in our study can be evaluated as a successful achievement. In this respect, although most salt marshes in Korea and other places worldwide have been destroyed or disturbed by excessive land use, feasibility of seed bank as a restoration tool is greatly expected.
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