Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s12237-024-01457-1

Publication Title

Estuaries and Coasts

Volume

48

Issue

2

Pages

30 (1-8)

Abstract

Avicennia germinans, the black mangrove, has shifted its range limit northward, and increased in abundance in the Southeastern United States. In January 2018, a 3-day freeze event caused substantial defoliation of green leaves in A. germinans near its northernmost range limit in St. Augustine, FL. During their recovery, plants that lost their leaves grew similarly to plants fertilized with nitrogen, leading to the hypothesis that freeze-killed green leaves (frozen green) may have acted as a fertilizer. To assess the value of frozen green litter as a nutrient subsidy, we performed an experiment in which A. germinans seedlings were grown in sand with green, frozen green, senescent, and control leaf litter. We measured growth response in seedlings using the following criteria: total plant height, internode elongation, and plant biomass. All litter treatments stimulated growth in seedlings to a greater extent than that of controls. Seedlings treated with frozen green leaves were at least 5 cm taller and had 0.5 cm longer internodes than those treated with senescent leaves. Seedlings grown in the green leaf treatment were 8 cm taller, on average, and internodes were 0.12 cm longer than the senescent treatment. Biomass was 0.6–0.8 g greater in seedlings treated with green or frozen green litter than in the control treatments. We also conducted a leaching experiment to compare mass loss rates. Frozen and green leaves lost more mass in the leaching experiment than senescent leaves or controls. These results support the hypothesis that green litter that freezes can act as a nutrient source within the ecosystem and spur rapid recovery from freeze damage.

Rights

© The Author(s) 2024

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "All data are available upon request."

Original Publication Citation

Overstreet, K., Dangremond, E. M., & Feller, I. C. (2025). Frozen green leaves as potential nutrient subsidies in North American mangrove ecosystems. Estuaries and Coasts, 48(2), 1-8, Article 30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-024-01457-1

ORCID

0009-0007-2010-7111 (Overstreet)

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