Ecology of salt marshes in contrasting tidal environments in Maritime Canada

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This grant will support our long-term research on the ecology of salt marshes in Maritime Canada. Salt marshes are important features of coastal shorelines throughout the world, and are characterized by tough, salt-tolerant grasses which are able to grow on soils that are regularly covered by tidal water. Salt marshes are very productive ecosystems that serve a number of critical environmental functions, such as storing carbon, filtering pollution, providing nursery habitat to a diversity of organisms, and sheltering coasts from sea level rise or storm activity. The ecology of salt marshes has been extensively studied in southern climates, but in northern climates, particularly in areas with severe, icy winters, there is much that remains unknown about the basic ecological processes at work in the salt marsh. We plan to first describe and characterize the composition of plant and animal species in several different marshes located in the upper Bay of Fundy and in the Northumberland Strait. We will examine the interactions between grasses and invertebrate species living in the marshes, as such interactions are known to have important effects on the structure, extent and physical stability of the salt marsh landscape. We are planning to compare and contrast the salt marshes from the two different areas because they are subject to such dramatically different tidal environments. The Northumberland Strait experiences small tides, with clear water and strong seasonal changes in water temperature, while the Bay of Fundy experiences huge tides, with turbid water and much smaller variation in water temperature year-round. Comparative analysis makes a useful research strategy for identifying mechanisms that explain the workings of various ecological processes. Studying the different tidal environments will also improve our understanding of how salt marshes may be affected by changes in sea level or tidal amplitudes. Our research studies will also specifically investigate the effects of winter stresses and disturbances on the structure and dynamics of the salt marsh community in both the Bay of Fundy and Northumberland Strait.