van de Vijsel Roeland C, van Belzen Jim, Bouma Tjeerd J, van der Wal Daphne, Borsje Bas W, Temmerman Stijn, Cornacchia Loreta, Gourgue Olivier, van de Koppel Johan
Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Yerseke, The Netherlands.
Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Nat Commun. 2023 Nov 7;14(1):7158. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42731-3.
Channel networks are key to coastal wetland functioning and resilience under climate change. Vegetation affects sediment and hydrodynamics in many different ways, which calls for a coherent framework to explain how vegetation shapes channel network geometry and functioning. Here, we introduce an idealized model that shows how coastal wetland vegetation creates more complexly branching networks by increasing the ratio of channel incision versus topographic diffusion rates, thereby amplifying the channelization feedback that recursively incises finer-scale side-channels. This complexification trend qualitatively agrees with and provides an explanation for field data presented here as well as in earlier studies. Moreover, our model demonstrates that a stronger biogeomorphic feedback leads to higher and more densely vegetated marsh platforms and more extensive drainage networks. These findings may inspire future field research by raising the hypothesis that vegetation-induced self-organization enhances the storm surge buffering capacity of coastal wetlands and their resilience under sea-level rise.
渠道网络是气候变化下沿海湿地功能和恢复力的关键。植被以多种不同方式影响沉积物和水动力，这就需要一个连贯的框架来解释植被如何塑造渠道网络的几何形状和功能。在此，我们引入一个理想化模型，该模型表明沿海湿地植被如何通过增加河道下切与地形扩散速率的比值来创造出分支更复杂的网络，从而放大河道化反馈，该反馈会递归地切割更细尺度的侧河道。这种复杂化趋势在定性上与本文以及早期研究中呈现的实地数据一致，并为其提供了解释。此外，我们的模型表明，更强的生物地貌反馈会导致更高且植被更密集的沼泽平台以及更广泛的排水网络。这些发现可能会激发未来的实地研究，提出植被诱导的自组织增强沿海湿地的风暴潮缓冲能力及其在海平面上升情况下的恢复力这一假设。
