In the absence of horizontal migration, salt marshes must build vertical elevation to persist under sea level rise by building soil through primary production and inorganic sediment deposition. Here we examine a phenomenon observed in a high salinity salt marsh estuary whereby leaf-surface coatings form on Spartina alterniflora (aka Sporobolus alterniflorus ) leaves and we investigate whether these coatings can inhibit photosy...

Although climate warming affects photosynthetic carbon sequestration in coastal wetland plants, the seasonality of this effect has not been assessed. We investigated the growth traits and photosynthetic properties of Phragmites australis by using open-top chambers (OTCs) to conduct a warming experiment in the coastal wetlands of the Yellow River Delta during a single growing season. The OTCs significantly elevated temperatures...

Seedling recruitment is an important mode of establishment utilized by many invasive plants. In widespread invasive plants, regional variation in the rates of seedling recruitment can contribute to differences in invasion intensity across regions. In this study, we examined regional variation in reproductive traits and seedling performance in a cosmopolitan invasive wetland grass, Phragmites australis . We tested whether nitro...

Methane (CH 4 ) is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) with atmospheric concentrations that have nearly tripled since pre‐industrial times. Wetlands account for a large share of global CH 4 emissions, yet the magnitude and factors controlling CH 4 fluxes in tidal wetlands remain uncertain. We synthesized CH 4 flux data from 100 chamber and 9 eddy covariance (EC) sites across tidal marshes in the conterminous United States to assess...

Stocks and fluxes of soil inorganic carbon have long been ignored in the context of coastal carbon sequestration, and their implications for the climate cooling effect of blue carbon ecosystems are complex. Here, we investigate the role of soil inorganic carbon in five salt marshes along the northern coast of the European Wadden Sea, one of the world's largest intertidal areas, harboring ~ 20% of European salt‐marsh area. We d...

Understanding the processes that control deep soil carbon (C) dynamics and accumulation is of key importance, given the relevance of soil organic matter ( SOM ) as a vast C pool and climate change buffer. Methodological constraints of measuring SOM decomposition in the field prevent the addressing of real‐time rhizosphere effects that regulate nutrient cycling and SOM decomposition. An invasive lineage of Phragmites australis...

Coastal marshes are highly valued for ecosystem services such as protecting inland habitats from storms, sequestering carbon, removing nutrients and other pollutants from surface water, and providing habitat for fish, shellfish, and birds. Because plants largely determine the structure and function of coastal marshes, quantifying plant biomass is essential for evaluating these ecosystem services, understanding the biogeochemic...

North American Atlantic salt marshes are generally considered to be nitrogen (N) limited systems, and plants within these marshes were historically thought to use only inorganic forms of N, such as NH 4 + . Recent research has suggested that Spartina alterniflora may take up some organic nitrogen compounds directly. To determine the availability of dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) to S. alterniflora in marshes along the North...

Elevated CO 2 and nitrogen ( N ) addition directly affect plant productivity and the mechanisms that allow tidal marshes to maintain a constant elevation relative to sea level, but it remains unknown how these global change drivers modify marsh plant response to sea level rise. Here we manipulated factorial combinations of CO 2 concentration (two levels), N availability (two levels) and relative sea level (six levels) using in...