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Massive Upland To Wetland Conversion Compensated For Historical Marsh Loss In Chesapeake Bay, Usa, Nathalie W. Schieder, David C. Walters, Matthew L. Kirwan

VIMS Articles

Sea level rise leads to coastal transgression, and the survival of ecosystems depends on their ability to migrate inland faster than they erode and submerge. We compared marsh extent between nineteenth-century maps and modern aerial photographs across the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America, and found that Chesapeake marshes have maintained their spatial extent despite relative sea level rise rates that are among the fastest in the world. In the mapped region (i.e., 25% of modern Chesapeake Bay marshland),94 km2of marsh was lost primarily to shoreline erosion,whereas 101 km2of marsh was created by upland drowning.Simple projections over the …

Bioreactivity Of Estuarine Dissolved Organic Matter: A Combined Geochemical And Microbiological Approach, Sl Mccallister, Je Bauer, Elizabeth A. Canuel

VIMS Articles

An integrated multidisciplinary study utilizing geochemical and microbial ecological approaches was conducted to characterize the origins, chemical nature, and quantities of dissolved and particulate organic matter (OM) utilized by heterotrophic bacteria in a temperate estuary. C: N, stable isotope (delta C-13), and lipid biomarker analyses revealed differences in the inferred reactivity of autochthonous versus allochthonous OM sources. Isotopic comparison of OM size fractions and bacterial nucleic acids suggests that high-molecular-weight dissolved OM (DOM) is consistently linked to bacterial biomass synthesis along the estuarine salinity gradient. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (as percent of total fatty acids, FA) were a reliable predictor of …

Sea-Level And Crustal Movements Along The New England-Acadian Shore, 4,500-3,000 B.P, W. Harrison, C. J. Lyon

VIMS Articles

Remains of three drowned forests have been investigated at Odiorne Point, New Hampshire, and Fort Lawrence and Grand Pre, west-central Nova Scotia. Carbon-14 ages and altitudes below mean tide levels were determined for four in-place stumps of white pine at each locality. Assuming that each dated stump was killed by rising salt water, and that its C14 age represented its true age at death, it was possible to construct curves showing the sequence of submergence and emergence at each site.

A continuous transgression of the sea, approximating 0.31 foot per century, is indicated for the period 4,500-3,200 B.P. This rate …