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Biomass data from the Peat Collapse-Saltwater Intrusion Field Experiment within Everglades National Park (FCE), collected from October 2014 to September 2016


At a Glance


Authors: Benjamin Wilson, Tiffany Troxler
Time period: 2014-10-01 to 2016-10-01
Package id: knb-lter-fce.1222.1

How to cite:
Wilson, B., T. Troxler. 2018. Biomass data from the Peat Collapse-Saltwater Intrusion Field Experiment within Everglades National Park (FCE), collected from October 2014 to September 2016. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/6a18d0ec3a960a82b6989c18f01205b2. Dataset accessed 2024-03-29.

Geographic Coverage


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Detailed Metadata


  • Dataset Creator(s)
    • Name: Dr. Benjamin Wilson 
    • Position: Project Collaborator
    • Organization: Southeast Environmental Research Center
    • Address: Florida International University
      University Park
      OE 148
      Miami, FL 33199 USA
    • Phone: 305-348-1453
    • Fax: 305-348-4096
    • Email: bwils034@fiu.edu
    • URL: http://wetland.fiu.edu/

    • Name: Dr. Tiffany Troxler 
    • Position: Project Collaborator
    • Organization: Southeast Environmental Research Center
    • Address: Florida International University
      University Park
      OE 148
      Miami, FL 33199 USA
    • Phone: 305-348-1453
    • Fax: 305-348-4096
    • Email: troxlert@fiu.edu
    • URL: http://wetland.fiu.edu/

  • Dataset Abstract
    With sea level rise increasing, saltwater intrusion into low-lying coastal wetlands is likely to occur.  We simulated saltwater intrusion into an Everglades marsh through monthly additions of elevated salinity water. Monthly biomass, aboveground net primary production, and culm density measurements were measured from a brackish water and freshwater marsh. All measurements were taken every other month 24 hours after dosing. Measurements occurred from Oct 2014 - Sep 2016. Ecosystem flux measured includes gross ecosyetem production, ecosystem respiration of CO2, net ecosystem production, and ecosystem respiration of CH4. These data are published in Wilson, B.J., Servais, S., Mazzei, V., Davis, S.E., Kelly, S., Gaiser, E., Kominoski, J.S., Richards, J., Rudnick, D., Sklar, F., Stachelek, J., and Troxler, T.G. Salinity pulses interact with seasonal dry-down to increase ecosystem carbon loss in marshes of the Florida Everglades. Ecological Applications. Accepted.
  • Geographic Coverage
    Study Extent Description


    Bounding Coordinates
    Coordinates indicate the center of our plots at a brackish water and freshwater marsh within Everglades National Park
    N: 25.22, S: 25.22, E: -80.84, W: -80.84

    Florida Coastal Everglades LTER Study Area: South Florida, Everglades National Park, and Florida Bay
    N: 25.761, S: 24.913, E: -80.490, W: -81.078

  • Attributes
    • Data Table:   Biomass data from the Peat Collapse Experiment
      Attribute Name:
      Site
      Attribute Label:
      Site
      Attribute Definition:
      Site name
      Storage Type:
      Text
      Measurement Scale:
      BW = Brackish water, FW
      Missing Value Code:
       

      Attribute Name:
      Plot
      Attribute Label:
      Plot
      Attribute Definition:
      Plot number
      Storage Type:
      Text
      Measurement Scale:
      Plot number
      Missing Value Code:
       

      Attribute Name:
      Treatment
      Attribute Label:
      Treatment
      Attribute Definition:
      Treatment label
      Storage Type:
      Text
      Measurement Scale:
      Control = Ambient water added, Treatment
      Missing Value Code:
       

      Attribute Name:
      Date
      Attribute Label:
      Date
      Attribute Definition:
      Date
      Storage Type:
      datetime
      Measurement Scale:
      Missing Value Code:
       

      Attribute Name:
      Biomass
      Attribute Label:
      Biomass
      Attribute Definition:
      Aboveground sawgrass biomass (grams dry weight per square meter)
      Storage Type:
      data
      Measurement Scale:
      Units: gramsPerSquareMeter
      Number Type: real
      Missing Value Code:
      NA (Not available)

      Attribute Name:
      ANPP
      Attribute Label:
      ANPP
      Attribute Definition:
      Aboveground net primary production of sawgrass (grams Carbon per meter squared per year)
      Storage Type:
      data
      Measurement Scale:
      Units: gramsPerMeterSquaredPerYear
      Number Type: real
      Missing Value Code:
      NA (Not available)

      Attribute Name:
      Culm.Density
      Attribute Label:
      Culm.Density
      Attribute Definition:
      Number of sawgrass culms per plot * 0.649 to convert to per meter squared
      Storage Type:
      data
      Measurement Scale:
      Units: numberPerMeterSquared
      Number Type: real
      Missing Value Code:
      NA (Not available)


  • Methods
    Sampling Description

    Method Step

    Description
    This study was conducted in Everglades National Park, Florida, USA along the southeastern boundary of Shark River Slough, the largest drainage basin in the southern Everglades. The coastal Everglades range along a gradient from freshwater sawgrass ridges and sloughs to coastal mangrove forests. We chose two sites for our study: a brackish marsh that was already experiencing saltwater intrusion and a freshwater marsh that, to our knowledge, had not experienced elevated salinity. The brackish marsh (25°13’13.17” N, 80°50’36.96” W) was dominated by Cladium jamaicense (sawgrass) sparsely interspersed with Conocarpus erectus (buttonwood). The site was non-tidal and characterized by distinct wet-dry hydrologic regimes in which the site was flooded for ~8 months out of the year (mean since 2000, Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) at station NMP). The freshwater marsh (25°26’07.77” N, 80°46’51.50” W) was co-dominated by sawgrass and Eleocharis cellulosa (spikerush) but also contained other freshwater marsh plants such as Crinum americanum (swamp lily), Bacopa caroliniana (waterhyssop), and Panicum hemitomon (maidencane). The hydrologic regime at the site was characterized as long-hydroperi od, flooded nearly year-round (~11 months, mean since 2000, EDEN at station NP62) during a typical season. The soil properties of each site are given in Table 1.

    Instrumentation
    LI-COR 840

    Method Step

    Description
    In September 2014, 16 plots were established at each site along an 80-m long constructed boardwalk (Fig. 1). In twelve plots, we installed 1.4-m diameter, 0.4-m tall clear, cylindrical, polycarbonate chambers by inserting them 30-cm into the soil. We designated 4 additional plots as “no-chamber” controls, and these had no chamber installed around them. Each chamber had a movable collar with a series of 10-cm diameter holes that could be closed during application of dosing water but were open to natural flow at all other times. Six ambient-water addition (“+AMB”) plots were established upstream in the natural flow, while 6 treatment (+saltwater, “+SALT”) plots were established downstream to avoid salt contamination into the +AMB and “no-chamber” control plots. The 4 “no-chamber” controls, which were interspersed within the +AMB plots (Fig. 1), did not receive any water additions and were used only for C flux and redox potential measurements (see below). A 3-m “buffer zone” was established to avoid contamination between salt-dosing and control plots.


    Method Step

    Description
    Experimental water additions began in October 2014 and were conducted monthly for 2 years (see Stachelek et al. (2018) for detailed methods). The volume and salinity of brine solution mixed to deliver our dose varied for each dosing month in order to reach porewater concentration targets. The volume and salinity of the brine solution was calculated based on both water height from soil surface and surface water salinity so that we could reach the target of twice ambient porewater salinity, 2-5 ppt at the FW site and 20 ppt at the BW site. Our brine solution during dosing ranged from 30.7-65.0 ppt at the FW site and 26.8-68.0 ppt at the BW site (Stachelek et al. 2018). The dosing solution was prepared using source water obtained at each study site (when the marsh was wet) or from a nearby canal (when the marsh was dry) with similar nutrient concentrations found in freshwater wetlands of the Everglades (C-111; 25°17'31.74" N, 80°27'21.59" W; Wilson et al. in review); source water was combined with a commercially available sea salt mix (Instant Ocean ® (Atkinson and Bingman 1997)). An equal volume of site surface water or canal water was added to the +AMB plots each month to account for the addition of water in the absence of salinity.


    Method Step

    Description
    The movable collar on the chambers was used to close the chambers while dosing to ensure that the dosing water remained within the chamber. Doses were delivered from elevated boardwalks running alongside each chamber using a submersible bilge-style pump (Xylem Inc, USA). The outlet hose was fitted with a spreader device that split the large output stream into six smaller streams. This design was intended to maximize mixing with ambient site water while minimizing disturbance to sensitive benthic periphyton. Emergent plants were briefly sprayed with freshwater following dosing to avoid potential damage from direct salt application. Chambers remained closed for 24 hours to allow the elevated-salinity water to penetrate into the porewater, then chambers were opened to prevent closure artifacts.


    Method Step

    Description
    Aboveground vegetation at each site was measured every other month using a non-destructive technique (Daoust and Childers 1998). Briefly, ten sawgrass plants per plot were tagged and turnover was determined from the change in the number of live and dead leaves. Within each plot during each sampling period, fifteen sawgrass plants were randomly chosen for leaf number, height of the longest leaf, and culm diameter measurements. Average aboveground sawgrass biomass was then calculated using previously-generated allometric equations (Childers et al. 2006).


    Quality Control
    Data are QA/QC'ed by visually plotting and inspecting data and removing any data points that are plus or minus two standard deviations away from the average
  • Distribution and Intellectual Rights
    Online distribution
    http://fcelter.fiu.edu/perl/public_data_download.pl?datasetid=FCE1222_Biomass.txt
    Data Submission Date:  2018-08-14

    Intellectual Rights
    This information is released under the Creative Commons license - Attribution - CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The consumer of these data ("Data User" herein) is required to cite it appropriately in any publication that results from its use. The Data User should realize that these data may be actively used by others for ongoing research and that coordination may be necessary to prevent duplicate publication. The Data User is urged to contact the authors of these data if any questions about methodology or results occur. Where appropriate, the Data User is encouraged to consider collaboration or co-authorship with the authors. The Data User should realize that misinterpretation of data may occur if used out of context of the original study. While substantial efforts are made to ensure the accuracy of data and associated documentation, complete accuracy of data sets cannot be guaranteed. All data are made available "as is." The Data User should be aware, however, that data are updated periodically and it is the responsibility of the Data User to check for new versions of the data. The data authors and the repository where these data were obtained shall not be liable for damages resulting from any use or misinterpretation of the data. Thank you.

  • Publications citing this dataset
    Wilson, Benjamin J., Shelby Servais, Viviana Mazzei, John S. Kominoski, Minjie Hu, Stephen E. Davis, Evelyn Gaiser, Fred Sklar, Laura Bauman, Stephen Kelly, Christopher Madden, Jennifer Richards, David Rudnick, Jemma Stachelek, and Tiffany G. Troxler 2024. Salinity pulses interact with seasonal dry-down to increase ecosystem carbon loss in marshes of the Florida Everglades. Ecological Applications 28: 2092-2108.

    DOI : 10.1002/eap.1798

  • Keywords
    sea level, biomass, aboveground biomass, marshes, FCE, Florida Coastal Everglades LTER, ecological research, long-term monitoring, Sea level rise, Saltwater intrusion, sawgrass, Sea level rise, Peat collapse, aboveground net primary production, culm density, ANPP
  • Dataset Contact
    • Name: Benjamin Wilson 
    • Position: Project Collaborator
    • Organization: Southeast Environmental Research Center
    • Address: Florida International University
      University Park
      OE 148
      Miami, FL 33199 USA
    • Phone: 305-348-1453
    • Fax: 305-348-4096
    • Email: bwils034@fiu.edu
    • URL: http://wetland.fiu.edu/

    • Position: Information Manager
    • Organization: Florida Coastal Everglades LTER Program
    • Address: Florida International University
      University Park
      OE 148
      Miami, FL 33199 USA
    • Phone: 305-348-6054
    • Fax: 305-348-4096
    • Email: fcelter@fiu.edu
    • URL: http://fcelter.fiu.edu

  • Data Table and Format
    Data Table:  Biomass data from the Peat Collapse Experiment

    Entity Name:
    FCE1222_Biomass.txt
    Entity Description:
    Biomass data from the Peat Collapse Experiment
    Object Name:
    FCE1222_Biomass.txt
    Number of Header Lines:
    1
    Attribute Orientation:
    column
    Field Delimiter:
    ,
    Number of Records:
    348