For my master's thesis, I also analyzed variables, including warming, that may affect mangrove and marsh productivity at the mangrove and marsh ecotone in northeastern Florida near St. Augustine. 

Most warming studies investigate the direct effect that warming has on plant growth. However, these studies often do not include abiotic factors that also may be impacted by warming, which can thus alter plants’ ultimate growth response to the rising temperatures. Therefore, I explored how warming temperatures impact Avicennia germinans (black mangroves) relative growth rates, abiotic variables, and the interaction between all these variables using a warming chamber experiment in the mangrove-marsh ecotone in northeastern Florida. I found that there was no warming treatment effect when comparing relative growth rates calculated from the growth differences between measurements taken 1 years and 3 years after the warming chambers were installed. In addition, salinity, soil C and N concentrations, and seedling root decomposition did not differ between warmed and control treatments. Therefore, there was no indirect impact of warming on mangrove relative growth rates from the alteration of abiotic conditions. Overall, this study indicates that abiotic conditions may not change with warming, thus not impacting the growth and carbon capture of black mangroves in the mangrove-marsh ecotone in the future. In addition, this study showed that mangroves are incredibly resilient and can withstand a range of abiotic conditions without diminishing their growth.

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Principal Investigator - Samantha Chapman, Ph.D.

WETFEET Website - https://www.wetfeetproject.com/

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Learn more about the WETFEET project by listening to this interview the project leaders did on PBS Newshour: