Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Soissons, Laura M.
• Han, Qiuying
• Li, Baoquan
• van Katwijk, Marieke M.
• Ysebaert, Tom
• Herman, Peter M.J.
• Bouma, Tjeerd J.

Titel

Cover versus recovery: Contrasting responses of two indicators in seagrass beds

Ist Teil von

• Marine pollution bulletin, 2014-10, Vol.87 (1-2), p.211-219

Ort / Verlag

Kidlington: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Two basic indicators for seagrass resilience are compared under field conditions.•The indicators – cover and gap-recovery – show an opposite response.•Standing cover is increased after nutrient enrichment while gap-recovery decreases.•Indicator choice is thus crucial for a proper interpretation of seagrass resilience.•Using a single indicator may be misleading to assess seagrass resilience. Despite being a highly valuable key-stone ecosystem, seagrass meadows are threatened and declining worldwide, creating urgent need for indicators of their health status. We compared two indicators for seagrass health: standing leaf area index versus relative recovery from local disturbance. Disturbance was created by removing aboveground biomass and recording the rate of regrowth for Zostera marina meadows exposed to contrasting wave regimes and nutrient stress levels. Within the experimental period, relative regrowth in gaps was around 50% in most plots, except for the ambient nutrient treatment at the sheltered site, where it exceeded 100%. The two indicators showed an opposite response to disturbance: the higher the standing leaf area index, the lower the relative recovery from disturbance. This conflicting response raises the question on the proper interpretation of such indicators to estimate seagrass health and resilience, and how to ideally monitor seagrass ecosystems in order to predict collapse.