Coastal engineering infrastructure impacts Blue Carbon habitats distribution and ecosystem functions
Mazarrasa, Inés (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas)
Garcia-Orellana, Jordi (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Puente, Araceli (Universidad de Cantabria)
Juanes, José A. (Universidad de Cantabria)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física

Data:	2022
Resum:	Intertidal estuarine habitats (e. g. , saltmarshes and tidal flats) provide important ecosystem services to society, including coastal protection, food provision and C sequestration. Yet, estuaries and estuarine habitats have been subjected to intense human pressure, such as land-use change and artificialization of the shoreline to support economic activities and uses. Construction of engineering infrastructures (e. g. , piers, bridges) in these areas alters estuary-wide hydromorphological conditions and thus sedimentation patterns at the estuarine scale, which are key drivers of habitats distribution and ecosystem structure, processes and functions. Most of the research on the impact of civil engineering structures on coastal habitats has focused on the biological communities that colonize them or the bottoms where they are placed, whereas their indirect impacts on adjacent habitats has been largely unexplored. Understanding the influence of man-made infrastructures on the distribution of estuarine habitats and functions is critical, particularly considering that shoreline armoring is expected to increase as a way to protect coastal areas from hazards derived from climate change. Shifts in habitat distribution and functions occur in several years or decades and relating them with the occurrence of past historical events is challenging when no monitoring data is available. By examining historical aerial photographs and different biogeochemical properties along a saltmarsh soil record, this study demonstrates that the construction of an infrastructure (i. e. bridge) caused a rapid transformation (~ 30 years) of a bare sandflat into a high marsh community and to significant changes in sediment biogeochemical properties, including the decrease in sediment accretion rate and C burial rates since then. This study contributes to increase the knowledge on the impact that the construction in coastal areas of civil engineering infrastructures can cause in intertidal habitats distribution and the ecological functions they provide for climate change adaption and mitigation.
Ajuts:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-1588 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CEX2019-000940-M
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Nota:	Altres ajuts: EU LIFE Programme (LIFE18 CCA/ES/001160)
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Biogeochemistry ; Environmental sciences
Publicat a:	Scientific reports, Vol. 12 (November 2022) , art. 19352, ISSN 2045-2322

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-23216-7
PMID: 36369255

13 p, 2.1 MB

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