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This text is from Hakai Journal, an internet publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Learn extra tales like this at hakaimagazine.com.
The clock is ticking for a lot of low-lying coastal areas. Sea stage is rising quicker than at any time in recorded historical past, promising to radically redraw the map. At a broad scale, we all know this to be true. However realizing exactly which plots will probably be inundated and which is able to stay dry land is a way more daunting activity. That effort might have an ally virtually nobody would have guessed: one of many smallest and least conspicuous types of life—lichens.
Greater than 18,000 species of lichens have been described worldwide. Every is a neighborhood made up of a number of species of fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria. This mix has enabled lichens to outlive in various and infrequently hostile circumstances, every part from tropical warmth to bitter Antarctic chilly.
To scratch out its area of interest, every species has developed to tolerate completely different ranges of temperature, mild, air high quality, and different components. Due to this sensitivity, lichens are already utilized by scientists to gauge environmental disturbance, such because the affect of logging or nitrogen air pollution. Lichens additionally range of their salt tolerance. It’s this property, says botanist Roger Rosentreter at Idaho’s Boise State College, that makes them so helpful in understanding sea stage rise.
“Lichens are an excellent indicator of web site historical past,” says Rosentreter, who has studied lichens and associated species for over 40 years. Particularly, the species of lichens that develop on a coastal web site could also be an efficient indicator of low ranges of saltwater intrusion and spray, which may be attributable to rare flooding or storm occasions. Since sea ranges are persevering with to rise, any web site that has skilled occasional salt water prior to now is more likely to see extra frequent flooding and storm results sooner or later.
Just lately, Rosentreter and his spouse, fellow Boise State botanist Ann DeBolt, studied the lichen communities of two state parks close to West Palm Seashore, Florida. One park, on a barrier island, is topic to frequent salt spray and storm flooding, whereas the opposite is inland simply 500 meters away. The scientists discovered two surprisingly completely different lichen communities at every web site. By evaluating the 2, they began constructing a listing of lichen species that may be helpful indicators of the long-term or historic presence of salt water.

It takes extra than simply salt sensitivity to make a lichen an excellent indicator of whether or not a web site has skilled the primary results of sea stage rise. The lichen’s personal life historical past additionally comes into play.
Species just like the powdery medallion lichen (left picture) may be killed if subjected to an excessive amount of salt water by a storm or flood. However this lichen’s fast copy lets it swiftly recolonize after the ocean recedes. Bigger species with slower development and copy, and in addition low salt tolerance, just like the ruffled blue jellyskin (proper picture), can higher inform the saltwater historical past of a web site. These salt-intolerant lichens couldn’t have survived and grown if a saltwater occasion like storm spray or flooding had occurred at any level throughout their life. Since some lichen species can stay for many years or longer, the report they supply may be each hyperlocal in house and in depth in time.
Of the 48 completely different lichen species Rosentreter and DeBolt discovered at their two Florida survey websites, 11 are dependable indicators of salt water’s presence. Seven of the species solely prefer to develop in locations with very low saltwater affect, whereas 4 are salt tolerant, so discovering them rising suggests the positioning has a average historical past of salt and the next danger of being affected by rising seas.
Usually, they discovered that the species that finest point out if a web site will probably be comparatively protected from sea stage rise and saltwater inundation are lichens which are bigger and leafier and infrequently mild inexperienced or blue in shade. However lichens may be tough to determine, and a few promising indicator species look fairly just like much less helpful ones. “You’ve obtained to be at the least an intermediate plant individual to determine it out,” says Rosentreter.
“The great factor is, these aren’t simply in Florida. They’re in the entire southeast coastal plain,” he says. Stories on iNaturalist, as an illustration, put the ruffled blue jellyskin all alongside the US East Coast and past.
Borja G. Reguero, an knowledgeable in conserving pure defenses towards sea stage rise on the College of California, Santa Cruz, who was not concerned within the analysis, sees parallels between how coastal communities and lichens deal with environmental change. “It makes numerous sense to seek out these indicator [species] the place the frequency of spray or flood occasions are over a threshold the place some species usually are not capable of stay anymore,” he says. “You might say the identical factor about people and coastal infrastructure. You get to a tipping level the place particular neighborhoods get flooded so repeatedly that they don’t get insurance coverage.”
Trendy science affords an array of instruments to check sea stage rise, from satellite tv for pc information to groundwater and soil sampling. Lichens could possibly be one other solution to see, at smaller site-specific scales, the place the ocean is coming subsequent, and simply as importantly, the place it’s not.
This text first appeared in Hakai Journal and is republished right here with permission.
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