Abstract
Recently, spatial organization in salt marshes was shown to contain vital information on system resilience. However, in salt marshes, it remains poorly understood what shaping processes regulate spatial patterns in soil or vegetation properties that can be detected in the surface reflectance signal. In this case study we compared the effect on surface reflectance of four major shaping processes: Flooding duration, wave forcing, competition, and creek formation. We applied the ProSail model to a pioneering salt marsh species (Spartina anglica) to identify through which vegetation and soil properties these processes affected reflectance, and used in situ reflectance data at the leaf and canopy scale and satellite data on the canopy scale to identify the spatial patterns in the biophysical characteristics of this salt marsh pioneer in spring. Our results suggest that the spatial patterns in the pioneer zone of the studied salt marsh are mainly caused by the effect of flood duration. Flood duration explained over three times as much of the variation in canopy properties as wave forcing, competition, or creek influence. It particularly affects spatial patterns through canopy properties, especially the leaf area index, while leaf characteristics appear to have a relatively minor effect on reflectance.
Highlights
Analyzing spatial patterns has long been recognized as an important method to understand the mechanisms organizing ecological systems [1]
The direct effects of drivers behind spatial variation, i.e., flood duration, wave forcing, competition, and creek influence on in situ measured vegetation properties show that flood duration and wave forcing affected all vegetation characteristics, and their effects were strongest on chlorophyll a+b and carotene content (Figure 1)
Nearness to creeks was only significantly correlated with chlorophyll a+b and carotene content, but this correlation explained over 40% of the variation in both cases
Summary
Analyzing spatial patterns has long been recognized as an important method to understand the mechanisms organizing ecological systems [1]. Understanding the processes that generate ecological spatial patterns in plant communities is historically considered a major goal of community ecology [2], which recently gained renewed attention when it was suggested that spatial patterns could increase the precision in predicting sudden critical transitions [3]. An example of this can be found in salt marshes where spatial patterns were found to contain vital information on system resilience [4]. This will increase our general understanding of ecosystems and improve our ability to monitor their stability
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