Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Impacts Of Seagrass Dynamics On The Coupled Long‐Term Evolution Of Barrier‐Marsh‐Bay Systems, I.R.B. Reeves, L. J. Moore, E. B. Goldstein, A. B. Murray, Matthew L. Kirwan

VIMS Articles

Seagrass provides a wide range of economically and ecologically valuable ecosystem services, with shoreline erosion control often listed as a key service, but can also alter the sediment dynamics and waves within back‐barrier bays. Here we incorporate seagrass dynamics into an existing barrier‐marsh exploratory model, GEOMBEST++, to examine the coupled interactions of the back‐barrier bay with both adjacent (marsh) and nonadjacent (barrier island) subsystems. While seagrass reduces marsh edge erosion rates and increases progradation rates in many of our 288 model simulations, seagrass surprisingly increases marsh edge erosion rates when sediment export from the back‐barrier basin is negligible because the …