Coasts and deltas

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-17-2025

Abstract

Coastal deltaic floodplains provide important ecosystem services such as trapping sediment, reducing storm surge, and processing riverine nutrients. These landscapes are at high risk due increasing rates of sea level rise, accelerated subsidence, extraction of resources from the subsurface, and extensive human interventions. Human interventions to preserve, sustain, or restore ecosystem services often aim at reversing disconnectivity that is responsible for degrading many coastal ecosystems as it prevents the natural distribution of water, solids, and solutes over the delta plain. Deltaic floodplains with tidal freshwater and estuarine wetlands can be defined by the elevation of the wetland platform that controls the frequency and duration of flooding (hydroperiod), an example of the feedback between structural (elevation) and functional (frequency and duration of flooding) connectivity elements and reflected in the resulting couplings among system's variables (process connectivity). These processes are critical to maintaining the function of coastal deltaic floodplains in mitigating CO2 enrichment in atmosphere and reducing nutrient loading to coastal waters.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Connectivity in Geomorphology

First Page

379

Last Page

404

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