Sea-level rise will endanger valuable salt marshes across the United Kingdom by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, according to an international study co-authored by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor.
Sea-level rise will endanger valuable salt marshes across the United Kingdom by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, according to an international study co-authored by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor.
Moreover, salt marshes in southern and eastern England face a high risk of loss by 2040, according to the study published online today in Nature Communications.
The study is the first to estimate salt-marsh vulnerability using the geological record of past losses in response to sea-level change.
An international team of scientists, led by former Rutgers-New Brunswick Professor Benjamin Horton – now acting chair and a professor at the Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University – found that rising sea levels in the past led to increased waterlogging of the salt marshes in the region, killing the vegetation that protects them from erosion. The study is based on data from 800 salt-marsh soil cores. Tidal marshes rank among Earth’s most vulnerable ecosystems.
Read more at Rutgers University
Image: Ray Sullivan via Wikimedia Commons
