Salt Marsh Net Ecosystem Carbon Balance: Improving Methods to Quantify the Role of Lateral (Tidal) Exchanges

Coastal wetlands are prime candidates for greenhouse gas emission offsets as they display extraordinarily high rates of carbon (C) sequestration. However, lack of data about rates of and controls on C sequestration in tidal wetlands, as well as substantial temporal and spatial heterogeneity, complicate development of both models and a methodology for use by C registries. The goals of our field research are to improve understanding of the climatic role of coastal wetlands, quantify potential for GHG emission offsets through restoration or preservation, and quantify impacts of eutrophication and other environmental factors. Among our objectives is to construct C and greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets for salt marshes, based on measurements of GHG exchanges with the atmosphere, C storage in soils, and lateral (tidal) exchanges of gases, C, and sediment. In this presentation, emphasis is on rate and source of tidal exchanges between salt marshes and adjacent estuaries. We measured fluxes by collecting high frequency data on tidal water flows and physical and chemical conditions in wetland channels using acoustic and optical sensors, as well as laser absorption spectrometry. To provide site-specific calibrations of sensors, we collected water samples across tidal cycles and seasons. Source investigations include analysis of stable isotope and lipid compositions. We used multiple regressions to estimate dissolved organic (DOC) and inorganic carbon (DIC) concentrations at high frequency over extended time. Carbon flux was calculated as the product of concentration and water flux, corrected for modeled flow outside of the tidal creek. Annual rates of net C flux from wetland to estuary indicate that both DOC and DIC are large terms in the salt marsh carbon budget relative to net exchange with the atmosphere and rate of storage in soil, and that DIC flux may have been underestimated in previous studies.