Hanan Almahasheer

Nutrient Limitation in Central Red Sea Mangroves

As coastal plants that can survive in salt water, mangroves play an essential role in large marine ecosystems (LMEs). The Red Sea, where the growth of mangroves is stunted, is one of the least studied LMEs in the world. Mangroves along the Central Red Sea have characteristic heights of ~2 m, suggesting nutrient limitation. We assessed the nutrient status of mangrove stands in the Central Red Sea and conducted a fertilization experiment (N, P and Fe and various combinations thereof) on four-week-old seedlings of Avicennia marina to identify limiting nutrients and stoichiometric effects. We measured height, number of leaves, number of nodes and root development at different time periods as well as the leaf content of C, N, P, Fe and Chl a in the experimental seedlings. Height, number of nodes and number of leaves differed significantly among treatments. Iron treatment resulted in significantly taller plants compared with other nutrients, demonstrating that iron is the primary limiting nutrient in the tested mangrove population and confirming Liebig’s law of the minimum: iron addition alone yielded results comparable to those using complete fertilizer. This result is consistent with the biogenic nature of the sediments in the Red Sea, which are dominated by carbonates, and the lack of riverine sources of iron.

Low Carbon sink capacity of Red Sea mangroves

Mangroves forests of Avicennia marina occupy about 135 km2 in the Red Sea and represent one of the most important vegetated communities in this otherwise arid and oligotrophic region. We assessed the soil organic carbon (Corg) stocks, soil accretion rates (SAR; mm y−1) and soil Corg sequestration rates (g Corg m−2 yr−1) in 10 mangrove sites within four locations along the Saudi coast of the Central Red Sea. Soil Corg density and stock in Red Sea mangroves were among the lowest reported globally, with an average of 4 ± 0.3 mg Corg cm−3 and 43 ± 5 Mg Corg ha−1 (in 1 m-thick soils), respectively. Sequestration rates of Corg, estimated at 3 ± 1 and 15 ± 1 g Corg m−2 yr−1 for the long (millennia) and short (last century) temporal scales, respectively, were also relatively low compared to mangrove habitats from more humid bioregions. In contrast, the accretion rates of Central Red Sea mangroves soils were within the range reported for global mangrove forests. The relatively low Corg sink capacity of Red Sea mangroves could be due to the extreme environmental conditions such as low rainfall, nutrient limitation and high temperature, reducing the growth rates of the mangroves and increasing soil respiration rates.

Phenology and Growth dynamics of Avicennia marina in the Central Red Sea

The formation of nodes, stem elongation and the phenology of stunted Avicennia marina was examined in the Central Red Sea, where Avicennia marina is at the limit of its distribution range and submitted to extremely arid conditions with salinity above 38 psu and water temperature as high as 35° C. The annual node production was rather uniform among locations averaging 9.59 node y−1, which resulted in a plastocron interval, the interval in between production of two consecutive nodes along a stem, of 38 days. However, the internodal length varied significantly between locations, resulting in growth differences possibly reflecting the environmental conditions of locations. The reproductive cycle lasted for approximately 12 months, and was characterized by peak flowering and propagule development in November and January. These phenological observations provide a starting point for research and restoration programs on the ecology of mangroves in the Central Red Sea, while the plastochrone index reported here would allow calculations of the growth and production of the species from simple morphological measurements.

Accumulation of Carbonates Contributes to Coastal Vegetated Ecosystems Keeping Pace With Sea Level Rise in an Arid Region (Arabian Peninsula)

This research was supported by a project funded by Saudi Aramco and baseline funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). O. S. was supported by an ARC DECRA (DE170101524). Funding was provided to PM by the Generalitat de Catalunya (grant 2014 SGR‐1356) and an Australian Research Council LIEF Project (LE170100219). AAO was supported by a PhD scholarship from Obra Social “LaCaixa”. This work is contributing to the ICTA ‘Unit of Excellence’ (MinECo, MDM2015‐0552). We thank A. Qasem and P. Priahartato, Saudi Aramco, for support and advice on sampling design; R. Lindo, R. Magalles, P. Bacquiran, S. Ibrahim, and M. Lopez, at the Marine Studies section of the Center for Environment and Water of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; and Z. Batang and staff from the Coastal and Marine Resources core lab at KAUST for help with sampling. We thank I. Schulz, N. Geraldi, K. Rowe, S. Roth, M. Ennasri, D. Prabowo, and I. Mendia for help with laboratory analyses. We wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Editor in chief M. Goni, for their precious comments/suggestions for the improvement of the manuscript. The data sets, including 14C and 210Pb data, CaCO3 concentration values, porosities, and CaCO3 depth profiles for all cores, are available in the open repository Pangaea (Saderne et al., 2018; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.887043).

Carbon stocks and accumulation rates in Red Sea seagrass meadows

Seagrasses play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, acting as natural CO2 sinks and buffering the impacts of rising sea level. However, global estimates of organic carbon (Corg) stocks, accumulation rates and seafloor elevation rates in seagrasses are limited to a few regions, thus potentially biasing global estimates. Here we assessed the extent of soil Corg stocks and accumulation rates in seagrass meadows (Thalassia hemprichii, Enhalus acoroides, Halophila stipulacea, Thalassodendrum ciliatum and Halodule uninervis) from Saudi Arabia. We estimated that seagrasses store 3.4 ± 0.3 kg Corg m−2 in 1 m-thick soil deposits, accumulated at 6.8 ± 1.7 g Corg m−2 yr−1 over the last 500 to 2,000 years. The extreme conditions in the Red Sea, such as nutrient limitation reducing seagrass growth rates and high temperature increasing soil respiration rates, may explain their relative low Corg storage compared to temperate meadows. Differences in soil Corg storage among habitats (i.e. location and species composition) are mainly related to the contribution of seagrass detritus to the soil Corg pool, fluxes of Corg from adjacent mangrove and tidal marsh ecosystems into seagrass meadows, and the amount of fine sediment particles. Seagrasses sequester annually around 0.8% of CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels by Saudi Arabia, while buffering the impacts of sea level rise. This study contributes data from understudied regions to a growing dataset on seagrass carbon stocks and sequestration rates and further evidences that even small seagrass species store Corg in coastal areas.

Leaf nutrient resorption and export fluxes of Avicennia marina in the Central Red Sea area

Red Sea mangroves occur in an oligotrophic sea without permanent freshwater inputs. Understanding the mechanisms to cope with nutrient limitation is, therefore, important to understand their distribution and nutrient dynamics in coastal ecosystems. We measured total number of meristems to estimate their leaves production and nutrients (N, P, and Fe) as a function of age in Avicennia marina leaves. Then estimated resorption rates; the recovery of nutrients from senescing leaves before they are shed in a total of 91 leaf from four different mangroves stands in the Central Red Sea. We found that the concentration of N and P but not Fe declined with age. Nutrient content also declined in the older leaves with high resorption capacity of 69% and 72% in N and P vs. low resorption of 42% in Fe. The role of Fe resorption is poorly studied in plants, nevertheless, this study could provide an insight into our knowledge of iron resorption in the mangroves, which has never been assessed before. The leaf nutrient export flux from senescing leaves in monospecific stand of Avicennia marina was 9, 0.4 and 1 g m-2 y-1 for N, P and Fe respectively, suggesting mangrove litter-fall to be an important source of bioavailable iron in particular, due to its low resorption, to the adjacent oligotrophic ecosystem.

Stable Isotope (δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, δD) Composition and Nutrient Concentration of Red Sea Primary Producers

Measurements of isotopic composition of marine primary producers are a valuable tool to follow and trace the source and cycling of organic matter in the marine systems, as well to describe the physiological status of aquatic photosynthetic organisms. Although stable isotope data abounds in the literature, relatively limited information regarding the isotopic signatures of marine primary producers is available for the Red Sea. Here we present data on carbon concentration (and nitrogen when possible) of phytoplankton, macroalgae, seagrasses, mangroves and salt-marsh plants, and examine how their isotopic signatures differed among plant types across a north-south gradient in the Red Sea. We also tested the potential use of deuterium, δD, to distinguish among primary producers whose carbon isotopic values may overlap. Our findings showed a clear differentiation of carbon and nitrogen content between the different groups of primary producers, as well as between species. Seagrasses and mangroves had on average larger carbon (30 and 49 % of C, respectively) and nitrogen content (1.8 % N) than other groups. In terms of stable carbon isotopes, seagrasses and macroalgae tended to be heavier (-7.3 ‰ and -13.3 ‰, respectively) than halophytes, mangroves, and phytoplankton, which showed statistically similar and lighter δ13C values (between -24 ‰ and -26 ‰). There was a tendency for the nitrogen isotopic composition of seagrass and macroalgae to become lighter from the southern to the northern Red Sea, in parallel to a decline in nitrogen concentration in the tissues, indicative of a higher dependence of nitrogen fixation as a source of nitrogen toward the more oligotrophic northern Red Sea. Our results showed an overlap in the δ13C and δ15N values between macroalgae and seagrasses; however, their δD values were significantly different (seagrasses -56.6 ± 2.8 ‰ and macroalgae -95.7 ± 3.4 ‰). This remarkable difference offers a promising alternative for ecological studies where a similar range of isotopic values could mask different potential sources.

Author Correction: global patterns in mangrove soil carbon stocks and losses

In the version of this Article originally published, the potential carbon loss from soils as a result of mangrove deforestation was incorrectly given as ‘2.0–75 Tg C yr–1’; this should have read ‘2–8 Tg C yr–1’. The corresponding emissions were incorrectly given as ‘~7.3–275 Tg of CO2e’; this should have read ‘~7–29 Tg of CO2e’. The corresponding percentage equivalent of these emissions compared with those from global terrestrial deforestation was incorrectly given as ‘0.2–6%’; this should have read ‘0.6–2.4%’. These errors have now been corrected in all versions of the Article.