↓ Skip to main content

Climate and plant controls on soil organic matter in coastal wetlands

Overview of attention for article published in Global Change Biology, July 2018
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

Mentioned by

news
1 news outlet
policy
1 policy source

Citations

dimensions_citation
115 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
221 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Climate and plant controls on soil organic matter in coastal wetlands
Published in
Global Change Biology, July 2018
DOI 10.1111/gcb.14376
Pubmed ID
Authors

Michael J. Osland, Christopher A. Gabler, James B. Grace, Richard H. Day, Meagan L. McCoy, Jennie L. McLeod, Andrew S. From, Nicholas M. Enwright, Laura C. Feher, Camille L. Stagg, Stephen B. Hartley

Abstract

Coastal wetlands are among the most productive and carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth. Long-term carbon storage in coastal wetlands occurs primarily belowground as soil organic matter (SOM). In addition to serving as a carbon sink, SOM influences wetland ecosystem structure, function, and stability. To anticipate and mitigate the effects of climate change, there is a need to advance understanding of environmental controls on wetland SOM. Here, we investigated the influence of four soil formation factors: climate, biota, parent materials, and topography. Along the northern Gulf of Mexico, we collected wetland plant and soil data across elevation and zonation gradients within ten estuaries that span broad temperature and precipitation gradients. Our results highlight the importance of climate-plant controls and indicate that the influence of elevation is scale and location dependent. Coastal wetland plants are sensitive to climate change; small changes in temperature or precipitation can transform coastal wetland plant communities. Across the region, SOM was greatest in mangrove forests and in salt marshes dominated by graminoid plants. SOM was lower in salt flats that lacked vascular plants and in salt marshes dominated by succulent plants. We quantified strong relationships between precipitation, salinity, plant productivity, and SOM. Low precipitation leads to high salinity, which limits plant productivity and appears to constrain SOM accumulation. Our analyses use data from the Gulf of Mexico, but our results can be related to coastal wetlands across the globe and provide a foundation for predicting the ecological effects of future reductions in precipitation and freshwater availability. Coastal wetlands provide many ecosystem services that are SOM dependent and highly vulnerable to climate change. Collectively, our results indicate that future changes in SOM and plant productivity, regulated by cascading effects of precipitation on freshwater availability and salinity, could impact wetland stability and affect the supply of some wetland ecosystem services. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 221 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 221 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 45 20%
Student > Ph. D. Student 33 15%
Researcher 32 14%
Student > Bachelor 13 6%
Student > Doctoral Student 12 5%
Other 27 12%
Unknown 59 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Environmental Science 70 32%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 35 16%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 21 10%
Engineering 8 4%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 5 2%
Other 19 9%
Unknown 63 29%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 September 2021.
All research outputs
#2,988,413
of 23,096,849 outputs
Outputs from Global Change Biology
#3,306
of 5,755 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#62,151
of 330,398 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Global Change Biology
#56
of 80 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,096,849 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,755 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 34.0. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 330,398 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 80 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.