Authors: Julie C Zinnert Sheri A Shiflett Stephen Via Spencer Bissett Benjamin Dows Paul Manley Donald R Young
Publish Date: 2016/02/18
Volume: 19, Issue: 4, Pages: 685-697
Abstract
Barrier islands provide the first line of defense against storms for millions of people living in coastal areas Upland vegetation that is grassland shrubland and maritime forest has received little attention even though this land surface is most strongly affected by development pressures We use remotesensing analysis to assess state change on seven undeveloped Virginia barrier islands over 27 years 1984–2011 that are free from direct human influence Our analysis highlights the spatial–temporally dynamic nature of barrier island upland land area and vegetation with rapidly changing ecosystem states Over the time period upland vegetation was dramatically reduced by 29 whereas woody vegetation cover increased 40 across all islands Although conversions between sand grassland and woody vegetation were variable within each island three major patterns of vegetative landcover change were apparent overall loss of vegetative cover frequent transitions between grass and woody cover and gain in woody cover These patterns are valuable for understanding natural evolution of barrier islands in response to sealevel rise Evaluation of temporal dynamics in barrier upland is needed to characterize underlying processes including island resilience or chronic stress and is a prerequisite to sustainable coastal management and resiliencebased planning especially when implementing ecosystembased solutionsThis study was supported in part by an NSF Grant DEB – 1237733 to the University of Virginia for LTERrelated work at the Virginia Coast Reserve The authors thank Joseph Thompson April Harris Joseph Brown Ashley Moulton the subject matter editor and two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the readability of the manuscript+ The authors also thank Rick Ward and John Porter for assistance with image analysis
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