期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2002
卷号：99
期号：3
页码：1395-1398
DOI：10.1073/pnas.022447299
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Salt marshes play a critical role in the ecology and geology of wave-protected shorelines in the Western Atlantic, but as many as 80% of the marshes that once occurred in New England have already been lost to human development. Here we present data that suggest that the remaining salt marshes in southern New England are being rapidly degraded by shoreline development and eutrophication. On the seaward border of these marshes, nitrogen eutrophication stimulated by local shoreline development is shifting the competitive balance among marsh plants by releasing plants from nutrient competition. This shift is leading to the displacement of natural high marsh plants by low marsh cordgrass. On the terrestrial border of these same marshes, shoreline development is also precipitating the invasion of the common reed, Phragmites, by means of nitrogen eutrophication caused by the removal of the woody vegetation buffer between terrestrial and salt marsh communities. As a consequence of these human impacts, traditional salt marsh plant communities and the plants and animals that are dependent on these habitats are being displaced by monocultures of weedy species.
