Speaker
Description
Coastal wetlands are worldwide valuable ecosystems that provides numerous ecosystem services, including flood regulation, carbon storage, water purification, and habitat provision. They are however increasingly threatened by anthropogenic pressures and climate change which are altering hydrological regimes, soil processes and ecological dynamics. Mediterranean coastal wetlands are biodiversity hotspots, hosting diverse and specialized plant communities shaped by strong environmental gradients such as soil salinity, soil moisture, and water table depth. These gradients result from site-specific geomorphology and historical land management and allow for the structuration of contrasted plant communities across spatial scales.
Mediterranean coastal wetlands are also highly dynamic ecosystems, with processes operating across multiple temporal scales, from seasonal hydrological fluctuations to long-term changes driven by vegetation succession, land management, geomorphological evolution, and climate change. This combination of spatial and temporal variability makes them complex systems to understand and manage, as different areas of a single wetland may follow distinct ecological trajectories.
Despite this complexity, many ecological studies still rely on punctual sampling of surface soil properties to explain vegetation distribution patterns. Although this approach provides valuable insights, it overlooks environmental variability through space (including depth) and time.
Here, we argue that a better understanding of Mediterranean coastal wetlands requires studies integrating spatial and temporal dimensions of environmental variability. We highlight how experimental approaches can be conducted at different scales to help improve our understanding of wetland functioning. We consider spatial scales from soil profiles and plant distribution within plots to habitats and to landscapes, and temporal scales from seasonal hydrological fluctuations to decadal ecosystem changes. This approach helps identify species associated with early community shifts, characterize the intensity and duration of specific plant stress dynamics, and understand landscape trajectories under the combined influence of climate change, past land use, and management.
Ultimately, spatio-temporal multi-scale approaches are essential for developing robust ecological interpretations and for designing effective management strategies explicitly accounting for dynamic processes.
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