Mirco Wölfelschneider

Understanding how coastal vegetation drives nutrient- and organic matter-dynamics at two study sites located at the North Brazilian coasts

One of the many hidden but essential services of coastal and intertidal ecosystems is maintaining the balance between production and release versus retention and storage of nutrients and organic matter, ensuring healthy and productive coastal waters. The gaps in our knowledge of key processes and players in this dynamic system prevent us from understanding what drives organic matter dynamics in coastal waters - not to mention our ability to predict these processes or to design an ecosystem that reliably releases or retains organic matter and nutrients: it is, for instance, an ongoing discussion whether and to which degree the effect of the coastal vegetation on coastal waters is retention and storage or release of organic matter and nutrients.

Along the northern coast of Brazil, the mediation of fluxes of nutrients and organic matter within the marine-terrestrial ecotone is mostly driven by mangroves: food webs in adjacent coastal ecosystems are fueled by the passively transported particulate detrital derived from extensive mangrove frosts and the input of the terrestrial hinterland.

The focus of my PhD project is to bring light into the entangled nutrient and organic matter dynamics found in the marine-terrestrial ecotone dominated by mangroves. By answering the question “Who contributes what portion of the organic matter pools in water column and sediment?” I hope to gain a better understanding of the role mangrove forests play in this environment.