Browsing by Subject "aquatic plants"

Climate change has caused a vital need to identify the coastal ecosystems with high carbon sequestration capacity, i.e. Blue Carbon ecosystems. The ability of these ecosystems to sequester carbon is strongly influenced by the physical environment. However, previous research on Blue Carbon potential of coastal macrophyte ecosystems has mainly focused on single seagrass species whereas research on multispecies meadows along environmental gradients, such as wave exposure has been scarce. Nonetheless, exposure and depth are known to shape the functional structure of macrophyte communities. The aim of this study was to investigate if exposure and depth affect the functional structure and biomass-bound carbon stocks of macrophyte communities along an exposure gradient in an archipelago area in the western Gulf of Finland, northern Baltic Sea. Macrophyte samples were collected at two different depths (1-2 m and 3-4 m) from 20 soft-bottom sites with different exposure levels. At each site, the functional community structure was quantified by measuring four functional traits (maximum height, root depth, root-to-shoot ratio, specific leaf area), associated with the variation in plant life history strategies and in addition, the plant biomass-bound carbon was determined. The results showed that when moving from the outer to the inner archipelago, the species composition shifted from marine to limnic species, and the community functional structure was shaped by environmental conditions (i.e. wave exposure, light availability, salinity) and depended on the depth. The plant carbon stocks did not differ significantly along the exposure gradient in the shallow areas, while at increasing depth, exposed sites had the highest plant carbon stocks, which can be likely explained with the environmental factors such as light availability. To conclude, these results highlight the need for further research that investigates the connection between environmental drivers, functional traits, and plant carbon stocks to assess the Blue Carbon potential of multispecies macrophyte communities in heterogenous environments.