Detailed information on the spatiotemporal dynamic in surface water bodies is important for quantifying the effects of a drying climate, increased water abstraction and rapid urbanization on wetlands.
Nonnative Phragmites is among the most invasive plants in the U.S. Atlantic coast tidal wetlands, whereas the native Phragmites has declined. Native and nonnative patches growing side by side provided an ideal setting for studying mechanisms that …
Coastal wetland vegetation along the Great Lakes differs strongly with latitude, but most studies of Great Lakes wetland condition have attempted to exclude the effect of latitude to discern anthropogenic effects on condition. This approach provides a means to identify wetlands worthy of preservation, to establish vegetation targets for wetland restoration, and to forecast changes in floristic quality associated with future climate change.
The invasion and expansion of the non-native Phragmites australis in Great Lakes coastal wetlands is of increasing concern. Monitoring coastal wetlands where water level has dropped and controlling Phragmites at early stages of invasion are essential for maintaining healthy Great Lakes coastal wetlands of high species diversity and wildlife habitat. This becomes important as water levels in the Great Lakes have reached extreme lows and are expected to decline with future climate change.
The wetland complex is the functional ecological unit of the prairie pothole region (PPR) of central North America. Maintaining ecosystem goods and services at current levels in a warmer climate will be a major challenge for the conservation community.
Assessment of vegetation is an important part of evaluating wetland condition, but it is complicated by the variety of plant communities that are naturally present in freshwater wetlands. Our findings provide a means of using vegetation to evaluate a range of wetland condition across a broad and diverse geographic region.
Great Lakes coastal wetlands are subject to water level fluctuations that promote the maintenance of coastal wetlands. Point au Sauble, a Green Bay coastal wetland, was an open water lagoon as of 1999, but became entirely vegetated as Lake Michigan …
QuickBird multispectral satellite images taken in September 2002 (peak biomass) and April2003 (pre-growing season) were used to map emergent wetland vegetation communities, particularlyinvasive Phragmites australis and Typha spp., within a diked wetland at the western end of Lake Erie. Multiseason QuickBird imagery is promising fordistinguishing certain wetland plant species, but should be used with caution in highly managed areaswhere vegetation changes may reflect human alterations rather than phenological change.
Plant taxa identified in 90 U.S. Great Lakes coastal emergent wetlands were evaluated as indicators of physical environment. A fuller understanding of how the physical environment influences plant species distribution will improve our ability to detect the response of wetland vegetation to anthropogenic activities.
Emergent plants can be suitable indicators of anthropogenic stress in coastal wetlands if their responses to natural environmental variation can be parsed from their responses to human activities in and around wetlands. We used hierarchical …