Coasts and Deltas

doi:10.1017/9781108903196.020

15 - Coasts and Deltas

from Part IV - Managing Connectivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 April 2025

Robert Twilley and

Edited by

Anthony Parsons and

Ronald Pöppl: Affiliation:
BOKU University Vienna
Anthony Parsons: Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Saskia Keesstra: Affiliation:
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands

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Summary

Coastal deltaic floodplains provide important ecosystem services such as trapping sediment, reducing storm surge, and processing riverine nutrients. These landscapes are at high risk due increasing rates of sea level rise, accelerated subsidence, extraction of resources from the subsurface, and extensive human interventions. Human interventions to preserve, sustain, or restore ecosystem services often aim at reversing disconnectivity that is responsible for degrading many coastal ecosystems as it prevents the natural distribution of water, solids, and solutes over the delta plain. Deltaic floodplains with tidal freshwater and estuarine wetlands can be defined by the elevation of the wetland platform that controls the frequency and duration of flooding (hydroperiod), an example of the feedback between structural (elevation) and functional (frequency and duration of flooding) connectivity elements and reflected in the resulting couplings among system’s variables (process connectivity). These processes are critical to maintaining the function of coastal deltaic floodplains in mitigating CO2 enrichment in atmosphere and reducing nutrient loading to coastal waters.

Keywords

coastal deltaic floodplains ecosystems services restoring connectivity

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Type: Chapter
Information: Connectivity in Geomorphology , pp. 379 - 404
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108903196.020 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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