Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses sequester large amounts of carbon per unit area due to their high productivity and sediment accumulation rates. However, only a handful of studies have examined carbon sequestration in coastal dunes, which are shaped by biophysical feedback between aeolian sediment transport and burial-tolerant vegetation. The goal of this study was to measure carbon storage an...

The 2013-2016 northeast Pacific Ocean marine heatwave (MHW) had myriad impacts on marine communities, but little is known about how this event affected coastal estuaries. We examined the extent to which elevated temperatures associated with the offshore MHW were observed in four estuaries (Willapa Bay, Washington and Netarts Bay, Yaquina Bay, and Coos Bay, Oregon) and the responses of macrophytes at marine dominated sites with...

Spatiotemporal variability in primary producer growth rates is a fundamental aspect of community structure. Understanding drivers of these patterns and their response to climate variability and change are ongoing challenges. Nutrient and light limitations often are invoked as proximate drivers of these patterns, but many other environmental and biological factors vary across spatial and temporal scales. In temperate rocky inte...

In 2014, a DNA‐based phylogenetic study confirming the paraphyly of the grass subtribe Sporobolinae proposed the creation of a large monophyletic genus Sporobolus , including (among others) species previously included in the genera Spartina , Calamovilfa , and Sporobolus. Spartina species have contributed substantially (and continue contributing) to our knowledge in multiple disciplines, including ecology, evolutionary biology...

Understanding the relative roles of species interactions and environmental factors in structuring communities has historically focused on local scales where manipulative experiments are possible. However, recent interest in predicting the effects of climate change and species invasions has spurred increasing attention to processes occurring at larger spatial and temporal scales. The “meta‐ecosystem” approach is an ideal framew...

Community structure and function in ecosystems are dependent on top‐down and bottom‐up factors, which vary across local, regional, and temporal scales. In estuaries of the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast, eelgrass ( Zostera marina ) ecosystems are exposed to latitudinally varying oceanographic inputs in the form of ocean upwelling. Previous research suggests that ocean upwelling is critical to eelgrass and ulvoid macroalgae abund...

Decades of research have demonstrated that many calcifying species are negatively affected by ocean acidification, a major anthropogenic threat in marine ecosystems. However, even closely related species may exhibit different responses to ocean acidification and less is known about the drivers that shape such variation in different species. Here, we examine the drivers of physiological performance under ocean acidification in...

The difficulty of experimentally quantifying non‐trophic species interactions has long troubled ecologists. Increasingly, a new application of the classic “checkerboard distribution” approach is used to infer interactions by examining the pairwise frequency at which species are found to spatially co‐occur. However, the link between spatial associations, as estimated from observational co‐occurrence, and species interactions ha...

In coastal marine systems worldwide, land‐based nutrient inputs are often correlated with blooms of macroalgae, which can negatively affect seagrass habitats. We used spatiotemporal trends in production to identify the role of marine‐derived nutrients in mediating these interactions. Among ocean upwelling‐influenced estuaries along the northeastern Pacific, we documented a negative correlation between annual production of ulvo...

The world's coastal habitats are critical to human well‐being, but are also highly sensitive to human habitat alterations and climate change. In particular, global climate is increasing sea levels and potentially altering storm intensities, which may result in increased risk of flooding in coastal areas. In the Pacific Northwest ( USA ), coastal dunes that protect the coast from flooding are largely the product of a grass intr...

Vegetation at the aquatic–terrestrial interface can alter landscape features through its growth and interactions with sediment and fluids. Even similar species may impart different effects due to variation in their interactions and feedbacks with the environment. Consequently, replacement of one engineering species by another can cause significant change in the physical environment. Here we investigate the species‐specific eco...

Ecosystem‐based management is logistically and politically challenging because ecosystems are inherently complex and management decisions affect a multitude of groups. Coastal ecosystems, which lie at the interface between marine and terrestrial ecosystems and provide an array of ecosystem services to different groups, aptly illustrate these challenges. Successful ecosystem‐based management of coastal ecosystems requires incor...

Marine protected areas (MPAs), including no‐take marine reserves (MRs), play an important role in the conservation of marine biodiversity. We document the status of MPAs and MRs in Latin America and the Caribbean, where little has been reported on the scope of such protection. Our survey of protected area databases, published and unpublished literature, and Internet searches yielded information from 30 countries and 12 oversea...