These coastal ecosystems are arranged in well-defined compositional zones parallel to the coast, with mixed mangrove stands near the coast giving way to brackish marshes (graminoid-mangrove mixtures), and then freshwater marshes. More than 200,000 ha of mangrove forests, sawgrass marshes, and sloughs extend along the modern coast from Naples to Florida Bay. In North America, one of the most extensive brackish marshes and the largest mangrove swamp is located in the coastal areas of the Everglades in south Florida. KBL.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ĭontemporary global climate changes are expected to cause many unprecedented ecological impacts on coastal ecosystems around the globe. KBL QY and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI #SGP-CRA-2050). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The palynological, X-ray fluorescence, and loss-on ignition data are available from the Dryad Digital Repository database (DOI: ).įunding: Funded by National Science Foundation (NSF DDRI Grant No.
Received: Accepted: FebruPublished: March 10, 2017Ĭopyright: © 2017 Yao, Liu. PLoS ONE 12(3):Įditor: Vanesa Magar, Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada Division de Fisica Aplicada, MEXICO If sea level continues to rise at 2.33 mm/yr in the 21 st century in south Florida, it is possible that marine influence will reach the threshold for mangroves to establish in the central Everglades, and we could expect a much more aggressive mangrove encroachment toward the northern and interior parts of south Florida in the next few centuries.Ĭitation: Yao Q, Liu K-b (2017) Dynamics of marsh-mangrove ecotone since the mid-Holocene: A palynological study of mangrove encroachment and sea level rise in the Shark River Estuary, Florida. During the next 3000 years, although sea level rise in the Western North Atlantic slowed down to 0.4 mm/yr, a spatial and temporal gradient was evident as the marsh-mangrove ecotone shifted inland by 20 km from 3800 to 800 cal yr BP, accompanied by a gradual landward replacement of freshwater marsh by mangrove forest. As marine transgression continued, marine influence reached the threshold necessary for mangroves to establish at the current mouth of the Shark River Slough at 3800 cal yr BP. Our record indicates that freshwater marsh progressively replaced marl prairies at the Shark River Estuary between 57 cal yr BP. In this study, we present palynological, X-ray fluorescence, and loss-on ignition data from four sedimentary cores recovered from a 20-km marine-to-freshwater transect along the Shark River Estuary, southwest Everglades, to document the patterns and processes of coastal vegetation changes in response to sea level rise since the mid-Holocene.
Holocene paleoecological records can provide an important baseline to shed light on the long-term dynamics of vegetation changes across this ecotone in the past, which is needed to predict the future. Sea level rise and the associated inland shift of the marsh-mangrove ecotone in south Florida have raised many scientific and management concerns in recent years.
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