Using self-organization to build climate-resilient ecosystems

Whether current-day ecosystems, often heavily modified by humans, can adapt to climate change is one of the most pressing scientific questions. Coastal ecosystems are at the forefront of climate impact, as salt marshes and intertidal flats may drown if these systems cannot follow sea level rise.

We developed a model to investigate how the emergence of complex creek networks during early salt marsh development affects the ability of marsh ecosystems to accumulate sediment, thereby compensating for sea level rise. This model is based on a scale-dependent feedback relation between vegetation growth and sedimentation, as plants locally block water flow, which then diverts to their surroundings. The model revealed that this self-organization process drives the emergence of a complex creek network of ever smaller creeks nested in between larger ones.

We used the model to analyze the importance of creek network complexity for the rate at which marshes accumulate sediment. The model highlights that in salt marshes, plant traits have a defining effect on the development of creek network complexity. Yet, it is the emergent effect of creek network complexity on sedimentation, rather than plant traits directly, that controlled sedimentation rates, determining the adaptive capacity of the marsh to sea level rise. Self-organized creek complexity proved a defining characteristic determining the resilience of this ecosystem to climate change.

We used our model to study whether restored coastal wetlands can be designed in such a way as to improve the adaptive capacity to sea level rise. We explored 14 realigned coastal wetlands and related the established, real-world creek network, being either entirely artificial dug-out channels or naturally formed creeks, to their potential, model-predicted sedimentation rate.

We observed that the developing channel networks in restored wetlands had much lower creek development and channel branching than natural systems, resulting in less efficient channel networks. Model simulations showed that if artificial creek networks deviated more from the creek pattern observed in natural ecosystems, or from the ones predicted from our model, they had lower sediment transport efficiency. Our findings suggest that if a more natural organization is followed when designing climate-proof coastal ecosystems, they are more resilient to climate change.