Vegetation succession of low estuarine marshes is affected by distance to navigation channel and changes in water level
When I started to work at the University of Hamburg about two years ago, I also had the opportunity to discuss a lot of things with Christian Butzeck, the only other member of the group (then) interested in sediment dynamics. Christian worked on the marshes along the salinity gradient of the Elbe estuary and also investigated which factors determine the succession of the marsh vegetation. He found that in the salt and brackish zones, the area covered by high marshes increased substantially but decreased in the tidal freshwater zone, while that covered by low marshes decreased in all the salinity zones. The distance to the navigation channel was the main factor determining whether succession of low marshes would be progressive or regressive.
His findings were now published and can be found here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11852-016-0432-1
Congratulations Christian!!
Stefanie Nolte 