Abstract
Society needs information about how vegetation communities in coastal regions will be impacted by hydrologic changes associated with climate change, particularly sea level rise. Due to anthropogenic influences which have significantly decreased natural coastal vegetation communities, it is important for us to understand how remaining natural communities will respond to sea level rise. The Cape Canaveral Barrier Island complex (CCBIC) on the east central coast of Florida is within one of the most biologically diverse estuarine systems in North America and has the largest number of threatened and endangered species on federal property in the contiguous United States. The high level of biodiversity is susceptible to sea level rise. Our objective was to model how vegetation communities along a gradient ranging from hydric to upland xeric on CCBIC will respond to three sea level rise scenarios (0.2 m, 0.4 m, and 1.2 m). We used a probabilistic model of the current relationship between elevation and vegetation community to determine the impact sea level rise would have on these communities. Our model correctly predicted the current proportions of vegetation communities on CCBIC based on elevation. Under all sea level rise scenarios the model predicted decreases in mesic and xeric communities, with the greatest losses occurring in the most xeric communities. Increases in total area of salt marsh were predicted with a 0.2 and 0.4 m rise in sea level. With a 1.2 m rise in sea level approximately half of CCBIC’s land area was predicted to transition to open water. On the remaining land, the proportions of most of the vegetation communities were predicted to remain similar to that of current proportions, but there was a decrease in proportion of the most xeric community (oak scrub) and an increase in the most hydric community (salt marsh). Our approach provides a first approximation of the impacts of sea level rise on terrestrial vegetation communities, including important xeric upland communities, as a foundation for management decisions and future modeling.
Highlights
IntroductionCoastal zones are dynamic environments responding across a variety of space and time scales to global, regional and local geomorphologic, oceanographic, and climatic factors [1]
Barrier islands are highly susceptible to a rapidly changing climate
Zonation is a physiological adaptation to salinity, duration of root inundation, and depth to water table, key factors controlling the distribution of vegetation communities across coastal landscapes (Fig 1)
Summary
Coastal zones are dynamic environments responding across a variety of space and time scales to global, regional and local geomorphologic, oceanographic, and climatic factors [1] Complicating these influences, human activities during the last 150 years have greatly impacted coastal ecosystems, with approximately 23% of the world’s population living below 100 m elevation and within 100 km of the coast [2]. Barrier island vegetation communities are primarily organized along the depth to water table gradient that extends from the sea water edge toward higher elevations with salinity influencing communities due to changes in water levels and salt water intrusion [5, 6] This is expressed as a pattern of zonation which is a function of a species within a guild or community adapting to factors regulated by the frequency and duration of inundation [7]. On barrier islands SLR will directly influence the surficial aquifer elevation and related eco-hydraulic processes such as infiltration, retention, runoff, biogeochemistry, and biodiversity [1, 8,9,10]
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