TY - JOUR
T1 - Long-term dynamics of production in western Mediterranean seagrass meadows
T2 - Trade-offs and legacies of past disturbances
AU - Leiva-Dueñas, Carmen
AU - Martínez Cortizas, Antonio
AU - Piñeiro-Juncal, Nerea
AU - Díaz-Almela, Elena
AU - Garcia-Orellana, Jordi
AU - Mateo, Miguel A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a PhD scholarship funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities to C. Leiva-Dueñas ( FPU15/01934 ); the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness , SUMILEN project ( CTM2013-47728-R ); the PALEOPARK project funded by the Spanish Autonomous Organism of National Parks (ref. 1104/2014 ), the LIFE BLUE NATURA project ( LIFE14CCM/ES/000957 ) and the GPC-ED431B project funded by Xunta de Galicia . This is a paper of the Group of Benthic Ecology 2014 SGR 120 and MERS research group 2017 SGR 1588. We thank Paul Lavery, Oscar Serrano, Eduard Serrano, Fay Belshe, Anna Thoran, Ambra Milani, Monserrat Soler Roig, and Candela Marco-Méndez for their involvement in fieldwork and laboratory analyses. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/2/1
Y1 - 2021/2/1
N2 - Seagrasses are marine angiosperms that can form highly productive, and valuable underwater meadows, which are currently in regression. A reliable assessment of their status and future evolution requires studies encompassing long-term temporal scales. With the aim of understanding seagrass ecosystem dynamics over the last centuries and millennia, twelve sediment cores were studied from seagrass meadows located along the Andalusian coast and at the Cabrera Island (western Mediterranean). This study is pioneer in using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as a tool to study environmental change in seagrass sediments. FTIR is a form of vibrational spectroscopy that provides information about the sediment chemical composition. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to summarise spatio-temporal data of the FTIR vibratory peaks in combination with climate and geochemical proxy data. Several PCA signals were identified: (1) one likely related to the relative changes of the main primary producers and the sedimentary environment (carbonate or siliciclastic sediments, with aromatic or aliphatic organic matter); (2) the marine community production (polysaccharides, total organic matter content and biogenic silica); and (3) the seagrass production (aromatics, carbohydrates, phenols, proteins and lipids). A decrease of seagrass production along the mainland coast was evident since AD ~1850, which may be due to combined negative impacts of seawater warming, local anthropogenic impacts, and extreme setting conditions. The legacy of these combined stressors might have influenced the current poor state of seagrass meadows in the Alboran Sea. Our results also revealed a significant long-term trade-off between the level of seagrass production and its temporal stability (calculated as the inverse of the coefficient of variation). This study provides a reliable baseline data, helping to assess the magnitude of seagrass regression and its drivers. This paleoecological information can help design more targeted management plans and identify meadows where local management could be more efficient.
AB - Seagrasses are marine angiosperms that can form highly productive, and valuable underwater meadows, which are currently in regression. A reliable assessment of their status and future evolution requires studies encompassing long-term temporal scales. With the aim of understanding seagrass ecosystem dynamics over the last centuries and millennia, twelve sediment cores were studied from seagrass meadows located along the Andalusian coast and at the Cabrera Island (western Mediterranean). This study is pioneer in using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as a tool to study environmental change in seagrass sediments. FTIR is a form of vibrational spectroscopy that provides information about the sediment chemical composition. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to summarise spatio-temporal data of the FTIR vibratory peaks in combination with climate and geochemical proxy data. Several PCA signals were identified: (1) one likely related to the relative changes of the main primary producers and the sedimentary environment (carbonate or siliciclastic sediments, with aromatic or aliphatic organic matter); (2) the marine community production (polysaccharides, total organic matter content and biogenic silica); and (3) the seagrass production (aromatics, carbohydrates, phenols, proteins and lipids). A decrease of seagrass production along the mainland coast was evident since AD ~1850, which may be due to combined negative impacts of seawater warming, local anthropogenic impacts, and extreme setting conditions. The legacy of these combined stressors might have influenced the current poor state of seagrass meadows in the Alboran Sea. Our results also revealed a significant long-term trade-off between the level of seagrass production and its temporal stability (calculated as the inverse of the coefficient of variation). This study provides a reliable baseline data, helping to assess the magnitude of seagrass regression and its drivers. This paleoecological information can help design more targeted management plans and identify meadows where local management could be more efficient.
KW - Coastal sediments
KW - FTIR-ATR
KW - Global change
KW - Marine paleoreconstructions
KW - Paleoproductivity
KW - Seagrass environmental record
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090594373&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142117
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142117
M3 - Artículo
C2 - 33254936
AN - SCOPUS:85090594373
VL - 754
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
SN - 0048-9697
M1 - 142117
ER -
