Document Type

Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.3390/f15061069

Journal Title

Forests

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

Coastal Zone Soil Survey mapping provides interpretive information that can be used to increase coastal resiliency and quantify how coastal ecosystems are changing over time. North Carolina has approximately 400,500 ha of land within 500 m of the tidal coastline that is expected to undergo some degree of salinization in the next century. This study examined 33 tidal wetlands in the Albemarle–Pamlico Sound along a salinity gradient to provide a coastal zone mapping framework to quantify shoreline change rates. The primary ecosystems evaluated include intact tidal forested wetlands (average water salinity, 0.15–1.61 ppt), degraded “ghost forest” wetlands (3.51–8.28 ppt), and established mesohaline marshes (11.73–15.47 ppt). The average shoreline rate of change (m/yr) was significantly different among estuary ecosystems (p = 0.004), soil type (organic or mineral) (p < 0.001), and shore fetch category (open or protected) (p < 0.001). From 1984 to 2020, a total of 2833 ha of land has been submerged due to sea level rise in the Albemarle–Pamlico Sound with the majority (91.6%) of this loss coming from tidal marsh and ghost forest ecosystems. The results from this study highlight the importance of maintaining healthy coastal forests, which have higher net accretion rates compared to other estuarine ecosystems.

Comments

The definitive article is available on the MDPI website at: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/15/6/1069.

Publisher Statement

© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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