Natural disturbances, such as floods, severe weather, and wildfire, historically played an important role in determining the distribution of vegetation communities in coastal marshes however, rising…

Natural disturbances, such as floods, severe weather, and wildfire, historically played an important role in determining the distribution of vegetation communities in coastal marshes however, rising sea levels, mild winters, and fire suppression have altered the disturbance regimes in coastal marshes, with consequences for the habitat quantity and quality of marsh dependent wildlife thus, conservation of these species is likely to increasing depend on human intervention as the effects of climate change accelerate in addition to larger scale disturbances like inundation and fire, tide deposited wrack and herbivory by tidal macroinvertebrates, such as crabs, have been shown to facilitate the establishment of disturbance dependent plants at smaller scales along the coast of the gulf of mexico, wildlife of conservation concern, such as eastern black rail and florida saltmarsh vole, are positively associated with the presence of the disturbance dependent distichlis spicata as such, mimicking the effects of wrack deposition and herbivory may serve to promote the habitat conditions required by these marsh associated species, while also being more feasible to implement than larger scale disturbances by mechanically removing vegetation and depositing in other sections of marsh, we will simulate the effects of both herbivory and wrack deposition both before and following the establishment of these treatments, we will monitor vegetation conditions and macroinvertebrate abundance in addition, we will monitor the activity of both eastern black rail and florida saltmarsh vole to determine the extent to which these species respond to the treatments this work will determine the feasibility and efficacy of manipulating small scale disturbance in coastal marshes toward conserving marsh dependent species specifically, we will develop a template for managers looking to conserve marsh dependent species across the southeastern united states, while also furthering our understanding of how these species respond to disturbance and the effects of climate change more broadly given the recent range wide declines observed for both eastern black rail and florida saltmarsh role, this work comes at a critical time for mitigating these declines and ultimately conserving these marsh dependent species