The accretion history of fringing salt marshes in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, was reconstructed from sediment cores. Age models, based on excess lead-210 and cesium-137 radionuclide analysis, were constructed to evaluate how vertical accretion and carbon burial rates have changed during the past century. The Constant Rate of Supply (CRS) age model was used to date six cores collected from three salt marshes. Both vertical accretion rates and carbon burial increased from 1900 to 2016, the year the data ...

Coastal wetlands are major global carbon sinks; however, quantification of carbon flux can be difficult in these heterogeneous and dynamic ecosystems. To characterize spatial and temporal variability in a New England salt marsh, static chamber measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes were compared among major plant-defined zones (high marsh dominated by Distichlis spicata and a zone of invasive Phragmites australis) during 2013 and 2014 growing seasons. Two sediment cores were collected in 2015 from the ...